Ontario hospitals happy to help Manitoba's overwhelmed ICUs, but families, staff feel strain

Out-of-province medical professionalssee it as their duty to tend to COVID-19 patients from Manitoba, the continental hot spot for new infections, says the head of critical care at one Ontario hospital network.

"We're grateful that we're in a position to help. We take this privilege very seriously," said Dr. Wael Haddara, the chief of critical care medicine atLondonHealth Science Centre.

"But of course,it does weigh on people that we have had to do this.As you can imagine, families are distressed that their loved ones have to be transferredthese great distances."

Hospitals in 14 communities scattered acrossOntario including Ottawa,Windsor, Sudburyand Thunder Bay have come to the rescue of the province currently being hardest hit by the pandemic.

With its own intensive care resources overwhelmed, Manitoba has transferred 51 patients to Ontario,twoto Saskatchewan and twoto Alberta since May 18. Nobody has been transferredout of the province since June 4, Manitoba Shared Health Chief Nursing Officer Lanette Siragusa said at a news conference Wednesday.

Dr. Haddara said hospital staff in London, Ont.,are mindful some of their current patientslive roughly 1,500 kilometres away.

"You are very much aware that this is someone who's come to you from great distances and that their family that you're talking to are grappling with this."

Welcoming patients from away

A little more than three weeks ago, Manitoba's ICU capacity strained as COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions kept climbing.That forced thetransfer of patients suffering from COVID-19 out of province, and away from their families.

One woman died after an attempt to airifther to an Ontario hospitalfailed. Two other Manitoba patients Kim Bullard, 57, and a man in his 30s have died after being transferred to Ontario.

Opposition partiesslammed the Manitoba government for needing to transfer patients, the only province to do so. The criticsallege Manitobafailed to prepare for a third pandemic wave it knew was coming.

However, hospitals in Ontario were well equipped to accommodate a surge in patients. Many facilities were fresh off accepting COVID-19 patients earlier this year from hard-hit hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area.

Manitoba needed roomas Ontario was starting recover from its third wave, Haddara said. It didn't give staff, who are currently tending to a number of Manitoba patients, much time for a breather, he said.

"I think people were kind of ready to hopefully see the back of the third wave and then Manitoba went into crisis," he said.

"I think it was a little bit of disappointment that we're not quite over and done with the third wave. But thankfully, the numbers are manageable and so people are hanging in."

Woodstock, asmall southwestern Ontario city of 40,000 people, also has what's in short-supply in the province of nearly 1.4 million people to the west: an available intensive care bed and the staff to care for the patient.

Randy Hicks, Woodstock Hospital's director of critical care and dialysis, said his community is happy to help their neighbours.

"I will go back to the clich it takes a village to raise a child," Hicks said.

The hospitalaccepted 10 patients from elsewhere in Ontario earlier this year, and more recently, one from Manitoba.

Family distressed by transfer

Hicks said the responsibility to care for out-of-province transfersisn't loston him and the staff at Woodstock Hospital. It's a scenario where you"see the pain on the families' faces and in their expressions" during video check-ins with their loved ones.

"Who would want to leave their province forcare, when it wasn't your desire to make or have a choice in that decision? I think it's very hard on the patient and the family left behind" in Manitoba, he said.

Staff members have banded together, includingthose without intensive careexperience, to work as teams. The approach to care has been practised by many hospitals coping with a surge in COVID-19 patients, Hicks said.

"You are seen as a helper, a set of hands, a runner and a basic-care provider, under the supervision of the registered critical care nurse."

In St. Thomas, Ont., acityof nearly 40,000, Dr.Waleed Chehadistresses that the same standard of care is provided to every patient. The hospital has three COVID-19 patients in intensive care, all of whom are from Manitoba.

"If I were to cross out the little lettering beside their name thatsays 'Manitoba,' I wouldn't be able to tell the difference [fromother patients], really," said the chief of staff atSt.ThomasElgin General Hospital.

Conversations with theOntariocritical care commandtable, which determines the hospitalsManitoba patients are sent to, have been positive, said Dr. Chehadi. So have those with the Manitoba physicians handing off the patient and the loved ones left behind.

"I think all patients and their families have been very, very happy to be in a hospital that's delivering critical care, and they're very grateful."