Hull

By Trevor Greenway

An anesthesiologist from Chelsea is being forced to find work elsewhere in the province because there aren’t enough functional operating rooms in the Outaouais. 

Staffing levels are so low at the CISSS de l’Outaouais (CISSSO) that just seven out of the region’s 19 operating rooms will be functional this summer, sending medical specialists like Dr. Trevor Hennessey hundreds of kilometres across Quebec and Ontario just to find work. 

“Our CISSS is dying,” said Dr. Hennessey. “Surgeons can’t operate in a hallway, and anesthetists can’t operate without the operating room team. The surgeons and anesthetists in the Outaouais are ready, willing and want to work. We’ve entered into the profession to help and care for the population, and the lack of access to the operating rooms is really a big impact.”

Hennessey, the head of anesthesiology at CISSSO, said that his department has absorbed 17 full weeks of “essentially forced time off” because there was not enough staff to open operating rooms in Hull or Gatineau. This week, Hennessey is doing replacement work at the Roberval Hospital in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region. 

He also had to travel as far as Estrie near Sherbrooke and also had to get certification in Ontario to work at the Montfort Hospital for six weeks last year in order to give some of his local immigrant colleagues the local work.

“We brought them from overseas. We brought them with their family. They’ve moved their entire lives here, and then we tell them to sit at home and don’t work and you can’t make any money? I don’t want to lose these colleagues. I don’t want them going back home either.”

He said he’s flexible and doesn’t have kids, so he has agreed to take remote jobs so his recruited workers can stay and work locally.

The problem, according to Hennessey and healthcare advocates in the region, comes down to money – specifically salaries for nurses in Quebec, when compared to Ontario. 

According to the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec, nurses in Quebec with a bachelor’s degree have the lowest starting salary in the country, at $53,000 a year. It’s a significant difference in Ontario, where starting salaries for nurses are $74,000 – a staggering 40 per cent more than their Quebec counterparts. This is sending nursing staff to Ontario in droves. And the lack of nurses in operating rooms in the Outaouais means more medical technicians are leaving, including the region’s only vascular surgeon, says Hennessey. 

“We’ve lost four out of six plastic surgeons. We’ve lost a general surgeon. We’ve lost gynecologists with operating room time and lack of equipment,” said Hennessey. “We’ve lost urologists, and – most recently and the big one – we’ll be losing our last and only vascular surgeon for the entire region.”

He continued: “That is a major, major impact for the care of the population. Very sick patients will have to go to Montreal, and emergency cases will have to be transferred further to Ottawa. But when you’ve got a rupture [abdominal aortic aneurysm], every single minute counts. People with major surgeries, such as brain cancers, are going to need to wait significant periods of time.”

Hennessey noted that CISSSO nurses are “phenomenal, but boy, they’re getting tired.”

Doctors facing ‘moral distress’

Hennessey wanted to be clear that surgeons are not leaving the area solely to find work and make money, but many have left the region over what he calls “moral distress,” as doctors feel they can’t follow their duty of care in the Outaouais. 

“They feel like they can’t provide the care to the patients that they need and this is causing such distress that they need to actually leave our area to go elsewhere,” he said. “Some people feel the surgeons are leaving because they want to make money. That’s not the sole reason. They are unable to provide care and are getting phone calls week after week from patients desperate for care and they can’t provide it to them.”

He said that occupancy levels in the region in 2014 and 2017 were at 93 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively. Within 10 years, those levels dropped below 50 per cent “due to a shortage of nurses and other staff.”

A consequence of chronic underfunding

SOS Outaouais president Jean Pigeon said the latest news about reduced operating rooms is just a consequence of the region’s chronic underfunding over the last 10 years. 

According to the Observatoire de développement de l’Outaouais, it has estimated that the Outaouais region faces a funding shortfall of $180 million compared to other regions in Quebec. 

Pigeon has the same argument as many doctors and health advocates: The situation won’t improve until there is an alignment of nurse and medical technicians’ pay with those of their Ontario counterparts. 

“This is just going to slowly hurt our region more and more because nothing’s being done about it, right?” he said. “We’re the region in Quebec that has the fewest nurses per capita because … most of them are tempted to go and work elsewhere, especially in Ottawa.” Staff retention has been a constant struggle in the Outaouais region. In 2022, the Outaouais had the lowest number of nurses per resident in the province, with less than five nurses caring for every 1,000 people.

Gatineau MNA Robert Bussière did not respond to the Low Down’s call for comment.