Health-care professionals at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital are being pushed to the brink of exhaustion as the fourth wave of COVID has the ICU at capacity.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
kking@medicinehatnews.com
Medicine Hat Regional Hospital currently has eight ICU beds available for anyone needing intensive treatment, and two more usually reserved for cardiac care. All eight ICU beds are currently occupied by patients with severe cases of COVID-19 – only a small sliver of the 269 COVID patients in ICUs across Alberta.
“The demand is higher than our resources,” Dr. Paul Parks, head of emergency medicine at MHRH, told the News on Thursday. “We are extremely concerned.”
While Parks maintains that hospital staff are doing their best to treat each patient, not all those waiting for an ICU bed to open are able to access the level of care they need.
The ICU differs from a regular hospital unit in that patients receive one-to-one, 24-hour care and have access to the most advanced medical equipment like respirators. In other units, nurses care for up to six patients at a time and more commonplace equipment is used, like high-flow nasal cannula oxygen.
For some patients the regular level of care is simply not enough, and by the time an ICU bed opens, they are unable to recover from their illness.
Another stress for the health-care system is that the recovery rate for COVID patients is much longer than other ICU patients. Medical professionals are finding patients with the most severe cases of COVID remain in ICU for, on average, about 18-21 days. This is more than double the six-to-seven most ICU patients require before they can be transferred to another unit for continuing care.
Capacity issues can be felt outside the ICU as well. Routine surgeries and procedures are being pushed back or cancelled if medical professionals cannot guarantee an immediate discharge or quick recovery time. This can have disastrous results for individuals with existing medical conditions or priority cases, such as cancer patients, stroke survivors, etc.
For medical staff, the capacity issue is just another symptom of what feels like a never-ending pandemic.
“Our staff are stretched thin,” said Parks, “Fatigue is very high and morale is very low.”
As with each surge in cases, medical professionals must find new ways to care for all types of patients with only limited resources at hand.
With a continuing surge of COVID cases across the province, the capacity issue is not an easy fix.
In a press conference Wednesday evening Premier Jason Kenney said the Alberta health-care system “simply will not be able to provide adequate care to everybody who gets sick.”
The Alberta government and AHS is urging anyone not yet fully vaccinated to do so.
Kenney called this fourth wave “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” with those individuals comprising more than 90% of COVID patients in ICU.
With 88% of Alberta’s ICU beds now at capacity, those who become sick or injured for reasons other than COVID could hesitate to receive care. But Parks and other health-care professionals do not want to discourage anyone from seeking medical attention.
“We’re still here and still able to care for people,” he said.
