More details on breaks in service at Pontiac Hospital

More details on breaks in service at Pontiac Hospital

The break in some weekend services offered at the Pontiac Hospital announced Thursday prompted much reaction from the public when it was announced. Due to a lack of respiratory therapists, regional health authority CISSSO announced in a press release that they would be cutting back on weekend services in the operating room and ICU that require respiratory therapists. This means that on weekends for the foreseeable future, paramedics in the area with trauma patients and other severe cases will be directed to either Hull or Pembroke hospitals, depending on which is closer. Patients who are intubated at the Pontiac Hospital ICU during the week will need to be transported to Hull before the weekend.

Serge Boucher, the deputy director of professional services at the hospital, explained in a French-language interview with CHIP 101.9 that they are down to two respiratory therapists from their usual four, and in order to not burn out their remaining staff, decided that cutting weekends was the best course of action.

“You have to understand that there are two respiratory therapists. They are important professionals, they work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” he said (translated). “Together, we will burn them. We risk losing more. So, you have to take care of it. This is a solution we found. The respiratory therapists are happy, the anesthesiologists are happy, the population I think will be happy under the circumstances of the decision we made. Then, that’s the short-term solutions, we’re working hard on it to solve this problem.”

The full (French-language) interview with Boucher is available here.