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Showing posts from December, 2010

Overcrowded hospitals = more superbugs. But the bed closures continue.

The Civic and General campuses of the Ottawa Hospital are dealing with outbreaks of anti-biotic resistant superbugs.  And medical experts are blaming hospital overcrowding. Dr. Kathy Suh, the hospital's director for infectious diseases said medical staff have taken steps to isolate those with the infections to prevent further spreading. "We try to identify patients who have these early, admit them to private rooms where possible," said Suh. But here, as elsewhere, that is not so easy. "The factors that have led to this largely have to do with the volume of patients we are admitting to the hospital," said Suh. "We are quite often over capacity, but that does provide challenges in being able to isolate patients in private rooms as we would like to. Both campuses are fighting VRE, and the hospital expects about ten times more cases than normal. The Civic campus is also dealing with MRSA and C. Difficile. It's good to see that the media is begi

Sudbury hospital workers protest bed closures

CUPE Local 1623 members protested Monday to demand the North East LHIN consult citizens in northeastern Ontario before it closes 130 hospital beds at the Memorial site of Sudbury Regional Hospital in March.   About 190 hospital jobs are at stake, but Dave Shelefontiuk, CUPE Local 1623 president, noted that he is more worried about how the elderly will be taken care of in the future. Shelefontiuk called on the North East Local Health Integration Network to live up to the word "local" in its name and hold a public forum to discuss the closure of transitional beds. When contacted about the protest by the Sudbury Star , the LHIN replied via email, re-issuing a statement the LHIN made Nov. 24. Shelefontiuk adds of the rally: "I t was freezing, with the wind chill it was minus 30. But there was some workers from Memorial site there. We are now planning a public forum." dallan@cupe.ca

Registered (or licensed) practical nurses driving nursing growth

The regulated nursing workforce in Canada has grown by 8.5% cent in the last five years, but the number of licensed (or, in Ontario, registered) practical nurses has increased at three times the rate of registered nurses. There were 348,499 regulated nurses working in nursing in Canada in 2009, 76.4% of whom were RNs (that's 266,341), 22.1% of whom were LPNs and 1.5% of whom were Registered Psychiatric Nurses. The Canadian LPN (or, in Ontario, RPN) workforce grew to 76,944 in 2009, an increase of  18.5% since 2005.  Between 2005 and 2010, the number of RPNs employed full time in Ontario increased from 13,448 to 16, 873, a 25.5% increase.  The number of RPNs employed part-time increased from 8,748 to 9,577, an increase of 9.5%.  Another 2,357 were employed on a casual basis in 2009, but this was only a 4% increase from 2005.  The average age of a Canadian LPN was 43.4 in 2009, a decrease of nearly one year, from 44.3, in 2005. This is the only nursing profession that showed

Children's Hospital mental health beds closed to voluntary admissions

Demand for the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario's (CHEO's) 19 psychiatric-care beds has been so great that the hospital has been closed to voluntary admissions; the eight beds for teens at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre are also full, the Ottawa Citizen reports . "We're running out of places where we can put these patients," said Dr. Simon Davidson, CHEO's chief psychiatrist, who's also chief of the Royal Ottawa's specialized services for children and youth. He pointed to the bed shortage as a symptom of the province's chronically underfunded mental-health services, which quickly come under strain when demand surges.  "When we experience an increased demand like we're having now, we are very close to having serious difficulties coping." Davidson said it's too soon to say how much longer non-urgent patients could be expected to wait. CHEO officials are nervously eyeing the months ahead out of fear the winte

Sault Area Hospital Cutbacks: 73 jobs to go

The Sault Ste. Marie Hospital hopes to save $1 million by cutting 73 jobs.  The hospital announced these  cuts with an updated "Hospital Improvement Plan". (Geez, I hope we don't see too many more "improvements".) As usual, the hospital plans to reduce the number of "alternative level of care patients" (i.e. convalescing patients past the acute stage). The trend however has been for an increase in these convalescing patients at hospitals -- Sudbury Regional Hospital recently released a report noting that ALC days at the hospital had doubled between 2004/05 and 2009/10. And that occurred largely before the current squeeze on home care and slow down in the creation of new LTC beds.  dallan@cupe.ca

Seventh patient with superbug dies in Hamilton. Ontario needs public reporting.

Another patient with C. Difficile has died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton.  That makes seven since October.  One of those deaths has been directly attributed to the disease, five others are under investigation, and, in one death, C. Difficile has been ruled out as the cause of death.  What makes this situation unusual is that there is a public report of the deaths. The Hamilton Spectator  has followed this issue for some time and continues to report on it.  It's also interesting that the hospital is determining what killed these patients.  Government has claimed that it is hard to do this. While the government met OCHU's demand to publicly report superbug infections at hosptials, it still refuses to require the hospitals to report patients who have died due to (or even with) superbug infections -- MRSA, C. Difficle, VRE. Many more patients are dying from these superbugs in hospitals all over the province. But without public reporting, the public has no way of kn