Trillium In The News
Mississauga News
September 8, 2002
A safe haven
Around the clock, seven days a week, doctors, nurses and
paramedics make the difference between life and death
They’re the front line of medical care and quite often,
the difference between life and death.
For the sick and injured, the men and women who staff the
Emergency Room at Trillium Medical Centre and Credit Valley
Hospital are, quite literally, lifelines.
With more than 100,000 patients a year, the Trillium Health
Centre boasts the largest emergency department in Canada.
About 35 doctors and 150 nurses and staff treat 240 patients
a day at the 24-hour Mississauga site and 100 patients daily
at the Etobicoke Queensway site.
Credit Valley Hospital (CVH) has 95 emergency nurses and
25 Emergency doctors who treat about 185 patients a day – more
than 70,000 per year. A third of those patients are children.
“We see patients of all ages with the full gamut of
medical complaints, from benign to very critical,” says
Dr. Eric Letovsky, chief of the Emergency Medicine at CVH.
Every day is unpredictable and you never know what kind
of medical problem you’ll be treating next. The challenge
is to triage (assess) patients so that the most critical
are given higher priorities.
There’s no question emergency staff work under a lot
of pressure, but it’s that uncertainty and pressure
that draws nurses and doctors to specialize in emergency
care.
“Everybody finds their niche, and in emergency, we’re
a different breed of cat,” says Trillium emergency
nurse Lisa Seinen.
“There is no delayed gratification here: It’s
all about the impact you can make at that minute.” “It’s
hard to deal with heart attacks, strokes and kids drowning,
and you do flash to your own kids and family,” she
adds. “But in ‘emerge’, we also have the
greatest opportunity to make a difference and save lives.”
With five years of emergency experience, Seinen says, “We’re
not heroes, but our team does heroic things. And if you can’t
work as part of a team, then you shouldn’t be working
here.”
That kind of teamwork is becoming even more necessary, according
to Janet Cadigan, CVH Emergency Nurse Manager. “We’re
busy all day, every day,” said Cadigan. “Our
Crisis Intervention Team works out of Emergency to provide
psychiatric and social work support. And we also have contingency
plans for dealing with major disasters.”
With only two hospitals serving a growing population of
close to 700,000 in Mississauga, people who come to Emergency
often wait hours for treatment. “If people feel they
have an emergency, it’s an emergency to them and they
should come in,” says Trillium Nurse Manager Joanne
Flewwlling. “Waiting is frustrating, but we have to
educate them about why they have to wait. We’re dealing
with the family, not just the patient.”
The waiting times increase dramatically when emergency departments ‘gridlock’,
Letovsky says. “The biggest problem for all Emergency
Departments is the lack of adequate in-patient beds. We have
patients on emergency stretcher. Waiting up to 24 hours for
a hospital bed. That prevents us from treating other emergency
patients.”
The CVH website posts regular updates on how many patients
are waiting in Emergency for hospital beds.
“A big part of the problem is inadequate access to
family doctors,” says Trillium’s Director of
Patient Services Operations, Charlene Sandilands. “Most
don’t have evening office hours when people come home
from work. For a lot of people, the ER is the only way they
can get medical attention.”
Something that might help is greater use of Telehealth Ontario.
By dialing 1-866-797-0000, residents can talk to a registered
nurse 24/7.
Media Contacts
For all media enquiries, please call Public Relations at 905-848-7580 ext. 3832.
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