Hiring More Nurses? Why Not Just Restore Emergency Room Services In Niagara’s Southern Tier

 By Pat Scholfield

Let me see if I get this right.   Three nurses are going to be hired part time and temporarily for 10 to 11 months at a cost of $263,000 from the province to work at the ER in Welland , Niagara Falls and St. Catharines to assist paramedics who are stuck with patients for six to eight hours because of off-load delays.

Pat Scholfield, a Port Colborne residents makes about $345,000 less than Niagara Health System Chief Executive Officer Debbie Sevenpifer - which means she makes nothing - for ralling over and over again for better hospital care for the region's residents. Photo by Doug Draper

The Niagara Health System’s director of emergency services and critical care, Pat Morka said, “Off-load delay means that we are unable to bring that patient into the emergency because of a number of admitted patients in our departments taking up bed space, stretcher space…so sometimes, we don’t have the physical capacity to take that patient in until other things are done with some of the other patients.”
 
This almost sounds laughable. Won’t the additional nurses just clog up the space more?
How is this going to help the patient who is waiting an eternity for care?
 
I have a better solution. Restore the beds that were cut (without a proper plan) and bring back ERs in Port Colborne and Fort Erie to alleviate the congestion in the ERs in Welland , Niagara Falls and St. Catharines .

(Pat Scholfield is a Port Colborne resident and longtime advocate for fairer access to hospital services for the residents of central and south Niagtara.)

(Click on www.niagaraatlarge.com for Niagara At Large and more news and commentary on this issue and other matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)