SickKids experiencing 'much longer than normal' wait times for non-emergencies
Longer than normal wait times should be expected at the emergency department at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.
On Tuesday evening, SickKids tweeted its emergency department is experiencing “extremely high patient volumes and much longer than normal wait times for non-emergent issues.”
Dr. Jason Fischer, division head of emergency medicine at SickKids, said an overwhelming number of patients are currently visiting the hospital due to viral season and a lack of primary caregivers.
“We're seeing lots of viruses circulating. Kids are getting coughs, colds and fevers. But the second issue is that there's just a lack of access to care. We're hearing from families that they're having trouble accessing their primary care, their family doctor, their pediatrician, their local urgent cares are busy, their local emergency departments are busy,” Fischer told CP24 Wednesday morning.
He said the hospital has experienced wait times up to 12 hours, which can vary depending on the time of day.
“As everyone knows, patients don't all arrive nicely spaced out throughout the course of the day. And if we have a large volume of patients arrive in the late evening, wait times can be three to four times what we would normally expect,” he said.
In its tweet, the hospital said that it will continue to treat the sickest patients first.
SickKids also advised visitors to come prepared with water bottles, nut-free snacks, phone chargers and entertainment.
Dr. Dina Kulik, pediatrician and founder of Kidcrew Medical, said her clinic has also seen a surge of visitors in the past couple of weeks.
“So tons of pinkeye, tons of viral rashes, runny nose, cough, sore throat, stomach flus. It's really all the viral symptoms you can see, we're seeing in kids right now,” she told CP24.
The influx of patients at SickKids and other medical facilities comes as a recent study that revealed more than 170,000 patients in Ontario lost their family doctors in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study, led by Unity Health Toronto and non-profit research institute ICES, found the number of family physicians who stopped working doubled between March and September 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019.
“Nearly 1.8 million Ontarians don’t have a regular family physician,” Dr. Tara Kiran, lead author of the study and a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital of Unity Health Toronto, said in a statement. “Our findings suggest things are only going to get worse, which is really concerning because family medicine is the front door to our health system.”
To avoid an unnecessary visit to the emergency department, Kulik recommends that parents monitor their children at home if they have mild symptoms, including a runny nose, mild cough or diarrhea, or visit their doctor's office or walk-in clinic.
“Unless a child is having difficulty breathing, difficulty with keeping anything down in terms of drinking, losing consciousness, unless they're having really significant emergency worthy symptoms, we do want to avoid kids using the emerg unnecessarily,” she said.
Fischer also recommends that parents get their children vaccinated against both the flu and COVID-19 to reduce their chances of illness, and to use online resources to assess their child’s symptoms.
“The next thing is to use the resources that are available online, like ‘AboutKidsHealth’ that's available on our SickKids website. And also our SickKids virtual urgent care platform that allows parents, caregivers, patients to go online and to check and see if their symptoms require an emergency visit or if they can wait until the symptoms subside,” he said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction overturned by N.Y. appeals court
New York's highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction, reversing a landmark ruling of the #MeToo era in determining the trial judge improperly allowed women to testify about allegations against the ex-movie mogul that weren't part of the case.
BREAKING Honda to get up to $5B in govt help for EV battery, assembly plants
Honda is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant next to its Alliston, Ont., assembly plant, which it is retooling to produce fully electric vehicles, all part of a $15-billion project that is expected to include up to $5 billion in public money.
MPP Sarah Jama asked to leave Ontario legislature for wearing keffiyeh
MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by House Speaker Ted Arnott on Thursday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that is banned at Queen’s Park.
CTE: Researchers believe widespread brain injury may contribute to veteran suicide rate
Researchers are working to better understand if some Canadian military veterans may be suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE -- a disorder previously found in the brains of professional football and hockey players after their death.
1 arrested in northern Alberta during public shelter order
Residents of John D'Or Prairie, a community on the Little Red River Cree Nation in northern Alberta, were told to take shelter Thursday morning during a police operation.
Secret $70M Lotto Max winners break their silence
During a special winner celebration near their hometown, Doug and Enid shared the story of how they discovered they were holding a Lotto Max ticket worth $70 million and how they kept this huge secret for so long.
Remains from a mother-daughter cold case were found nearly 24 years later, after a deathbed confession from the suspect
A West Virginia father is getting some sense of closure after authorities found the remains of his young daughter and her mother following a deathbed confession from the man believed to have fatally shot them nearly two decades ago.
New deep-water channel allows first ship to pass Key bridge wreckage in Baltimore
The first cargo ship passed through a newly opened deep-water channel in Baltimore on Thursday after being stuck in the harbor since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed four weeks ago, halting most maritime traffic through the city's port.
First in Canada procedure performed at London, Ont. hospital
A London man has become the first person in Canada to receive a robotic assisted surgery on his spine. Dave Myeh suffered from debilitating, chronic back pain that led to sciatica in his right now and extreme pain in his lower back.