Edmonton dad laments eight-hour wait times for sick kids at Stollery ER

An Edmonton father is bemoaning the lengthy wait times – sometimes up to eight hours – for the emergency room at the Stollery Children’s Hospital.

And it’s a problem that’s affected pediatric emergency rooms across the province, with staffing issues and viral outbreaks of COVID-19 and influenza making the situation more challenging.

BACKGROUND: Alberta hospitals face numerous factors creating lengthy wait times

For Trent Daley, an Edmonton dad of three kids under the age of four, long wait times have made recent hospital visits very difficult.

“When you have a six-hour, eight-hour window, for me it was like, ‘OK, is this going to take sleep away that I’m going to need for my job? Who’s going to be the one sitting in there?’” he said.

Daley needed to take his kids to the Stollery ER several times since December, waiting up to eight hours for them to receive medical attention.

“What we weigh is, should we pack up a bag with snacks?” he said. “Should we eat snacks at the ER? Should we… how many diapers should we bring? Should we bring a blanket? You’re not getting any kind of bedside manner because there’s no capacity to give it. You’re lucky to get a chair, you’re lucky to get treatment, you’re lucky to get access.”

The situation has even made him conflicted in some cases about when to go to the hospital.

“Especially depending on which hospital you’re going to, you might not even get to see a specialist until 8 a.m. or 9 a.m.,” said Daley. “So it’s like, do you bother going at 6 p.m. or do you just wait the night?”

The state of affairs is the same in Calgary, where wait times can easily stretch beyond six hours at hospitals like Foothills and Rockyview General. The Alberta Children’s Hospital has also been seeing some of the longest wait times lately.

The United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) says the wait times in hospital emergency departments are caused by not enough beds and not enough staff.

“The volumes and the lack of beds mean that people can’t be moved,” said UNA president Heather Smith. “There are certainly efforts to move them through the system faster. Some people just can’t be moved – this isn’t McDonald’s where your line can be sped up.

“It’s absolutely terrifying for nurses across the province.”

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The UNA fears there will be deaths caused by the lack of resources in the province’s health-care system.

In an email statement, Alberta Health Services said they hope to see relief in the system as COVID-19 circulation decreases.

The health authority says its “plans include shifting staff members to areas of highest priority.

“Emergency departments are also seeing an increase in patients with influenza-like symptoms, and in patients seeking care after deferring it at various times over the past two years.

“This has meant emergency department wait times sometimes reaching winter peak levels. Specific measures fluctuate on a given day and site. The system has always been subject to spikes in volume that cause overcrowding and delays, especially in the winter. We hope to see relief soon as the level of COVID-19 circulating begins to drop.”

—With files from Tom Ross, CityNews Calgary