SickKids ICU reaches full capacity over the weekend as ER sees 'much longer than normal' wait times

SickKids’ intensive care unit reached full capacity over the weekend as the hospital endured “much longer than normal” wait times in the emergency department.

“Over the weekend, all ICU beds at SickKids were filled,” Sarah Warr, SickKids’ senior communications advisor, told CTV News Toronto.

“In the event there are urgent critical care needs, we have surge plans in place to pull additional resources to cover these needs.”

Warr said the hospital is continuing to experience staffing challenges, including in the ICU department.

News of their ICU reaching capacity follows a warning from the hospital ahead of the long weekend alerting parents that SickKids was seeing extremely high patient volumes and much longer than normal wait times for non-emergency issues.

A week prior, Alex Tong sat with his toddler for 15 hours waiting to be seen by a doctor in the SickKids emergency department.

“My 22-month-old was not eating or drinking for two plus days by the time I decided to take her on Monday evening,” Tong told CTV News Toronto.

He said his child’s inability to eat or drink was due to the lesions spread throughout her mouth after contracting hand-foot-and-mouth disease, a common viral infection among young children.

After 48 hours of mounting fear his kid would suffer from dehydration, Tong felt like he had no other choice and took his toddler to SickKids. “We were shocked. There was a line just to get to the triage area,” he said.

“Our estimated wait time was 4 hours,” he said. “We were there for 15 hours before we saw a doctor and didn’t leave until Tuesday afternoon at 1 p.m.”

Tong said he was looking for an explanation for what led to his extensive hospital visit – whether that be staffing issues or an increase in viral activity among children – but he said nothing unusual was raised by health-care staff, which was the “concerning part” for him.

“If this was business as usual, I would hate to see what abnormal looks like,” he said.

That same week, only 14 of the 109 pediatric ICU beds were available across the entire province, according to the latest provincial data published on Oct 6. That’s the lowest pediatric bed capacity the province has seen since Dec. 24, 2021 when 10 of the 83 pediatric ICU beds were available.

Ontario’s Ministry of Health told CTV News Toronto there are currently pediatric critical care beds available at hospitals in the province.

“Emergency rooms are closing, there’s a shortage of paediatric ICU beds, and people are waiting up to 33 hours for inpatient beds,” Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner said in a news release on Wednesday.

“The Premier and Minister of Health’s silence on this issue is deafening.”