Quebec faces severe pressure on casualty departments

Quebec's provincial government is injecting $C20m (£ 48m; $77m) into its hospitals as a short term measure to help solve the worst emergency room overcrowding crisis in recent memory.

That's $C5m more than the health and social services minister, Pauline Marois, promised two weeks earlier. She got the additional funds by appealing to Prime Minister, Lucien Bouchard, after widespread media coverage of an overflow of patients in several centres, notably Montreal and Quebec City.

On one Wednesday in February, 11emergency rooms were filled to more than double their capacity. Patients were waiting up to 10hours to see a doctor and more than 48hours—the legal limit—for beds.

Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Jerome, north of Montreal, reported its staff on the brink of collapse. Dr Jean Robert, the professional services director, said that the overcrowding since the beginning of January occurred at a time when the hospital faced a critical shortage of nursing staff. Hesaid that 160nurses—nearly 10%of the nursing staff—left last June under an early retirement plan conceived by provincial authorities in a systemwide reorganisation, and he hasn't been able to hire a single replacement since.

In Sept-Isles, a community on the north shore of the St Lawrence River, 18of 21general practitioners at the Centre Hospitalier Regional des Sept-Isles threatened to resign unless weekend and vacation replacements are found for them. They complain of working 60hour weeks.

Nurses in a hospital in the Montreal area refused to work on two shifts on 8February because conditions were unsafe as a result of overcrowding, they said. Nurses in two other Quebec hospitals also refused to work, citing personal danger.

At a news conference, Jennie Skene, the president of the Quebec Federation of Nurses, said conditions were “inhuman” and nurses were beyond frustration. Even the injection of new funds was just a short term solution.

The new money will be spent to hire 900nurses and other healthcare workers temporarily and to open 830beds in hospitals and nursing homes for short term stays. In an unusual move, $C3.2m will be given as bonuses to 13hospitals that have emergency rooms that have performed well.

Kathleen Weil, the chairwoman of the Montreal regional health board, said that an additional $C119m will have to be added next year to the area's $C3bn healthcare budget if future overcrowding is to be prevented.

Since 1994,10Quebec hospitals have been closed and about 16000health professionals, including many doctors, have taken early retirement.

Quebec patients face waits of up to 10 hours