WATCH: Mark Sernes, who suffers from a painful condition affecting his pancreas, refused to stay in the hospital when his bed was moved into the hallway due to overcrowding.
Mark Sernes was back home Friday after two recent visits to the hospital for a recurring and painful problem with his pancreas. He was first admitted to the Campbell River Hospital Nov. 24 and spent three days in the Intensive Care Unit before transferring to a regular room for more recovery. Then after three more days, he lost his room and bed altogether.
“It was quite a shock to me to come back to my room and find my bed in the hall,” said Sernes.
He’d been moved into a makeshift room in a hallway, his hospital bed replaced with a gurney and the only privacy was from two thin dividers. He was told he was now the healthiest person on the ward so he’d lost his room.
“My doctor was not very happy and I don’t think the nursing staff was very happy about it either,” he said.
Sernes had nothing but praise for his doctors and nurses but says his new “room” was between two doors that kept opening and closing. So instead of staying, he says he asked for his medication and went home instead.
“I knew from previous stays that ending up in the hall in the condition I was in would be a bad road to recovery,” said Sernes.
The same thing had happened to him during visits to the old hospital but he thought the new one, barely open a year would be better. It does have 16 more beds, but it’s apparently not enough.
“We have great concerns,” said the President of the BC Nurses Union Christine Sorensen. “The BCNU believes that hallway nursing in any hospital poses a threat to safe patient care and this is completely unacceptable.”
The BCNU says it is pushing providers like Island Health to alleviate the problem by opening unused wards and to provide better care in the community so people don’t have to stay in the hospital.
Island Health says it’s not uncommon to have a winter surge at this time of year because of influenza. In a statement to CHEK News, it adds “There are focused strategies underway to address capacity challenges, including work to reduce the length of stay within hospital, and improve access to care in the community.”
Dean Stoltz
