‘The situation is dire’: Grand River Hospital asking recent retirees to return in face of staffing crunch, surging admissions

KITCHENER — Grand River Hospital says it’s asking recently-retired staff to come back again to work because it faces “an unprecedented stage of stress.”

In a launch issued late Thursday afternoon, the hospital mentioned it solely had one mattress obtainable out of 660 at its Kitchener and Freeport campuses.

“At the moment we face an unprecedented stage of stress throughout our hospital,” president and chief government officer Ron Gagnon mentioned. “Because the starting of the pandemic we’ve added 146 extra beds and at the moment, all however 1 — a remaining mattress in our important care — is crammed.”

At 11 a.m. Thursday, Grand River had 11 sufferers ready on stretchers within the emergency division to be admitted to an inpatient unit.

“Whereas the scenario is dire, it's not hopeless and there's nonetheless a lot the neighborhood can do to assist not simply GRH, however all our native hospitals proper now,” mentioned Dr. Peter Potts, joint chief of workers at Grand River and St. Mary’s Basic Hospital.

The hospital’s launch urged individuals to get vaccinated in the event that they haven’t already, including that hospitals have seen a better proportion of unvaccinated individuals throughout COVID-19’s fifth wave, whether or not they’ve been admitted for COVID-related sickness or have it alongside a main grievance.

Sufferers must also contemplate options to the emergency division if doable, equivalent to the brand new COVID evaluation centres at St. Mary’s and Cambridge Memorial Hospital, pressing care clinics, or household docs.

Some sufferers are ready for days within the emergency division, as there aren’t beds obtainable on scientific models, and lively outbreaks in a number of models make it tough to confess new sufferers, the hospital mentioned.

“We are actually on the level the place we may have to start out transferring sufferers out of our hospital for care, and it’s a degree we by no means needed to succeed in,” Gagnon mentioned. “We additionally know that this isn't a simple or prepared repair, as many hospitals within the area and throughout the province are in the identical scenario.”

Grand River mentioned it’s probably that admissions haven’t but peaked, as hospitalization is a lagging indicator that sometimes trails declining neighborhood an infection by two or three weeks.

Staffing additionally stays a problem, with tons of of hospital workers isolating after testing constructive or being uncovered. Gagnon mentioned “we're working across the clock to rent and practice registered scientific workers to answer this wave of the pandemic.”