Sharjah24 – AFP: An acute nursing shortage is clogging or even closing hospital emergency rooms across Canada, pushing an already stressed national health system to the brink with potentially severe consequences for patient care.
Burnout from the Covid-19 pandemic, abuse from patients and salary discontent have seen nursing staff quitting their jobs in droves, and experts say the situation is only likely to worsen.
The impact on emergency care is such that Ottawa police recently had to take a shooting victim to hospital in their squad car, rather than wait for an ambulance, and an elderly woman who fell and broke her hip was forced to wait six hours for help from paramedics based 100 kilometers (62 miles) away.
Over the summer and into the fall, staffing shortages meant dozens of emergency rooms were forced to close -- sometimes for a night or a weekend, sometimes longer.
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