About 250 people gathered at the Sackville Memorial Hospital on Wednesday to call for the Horizon Health Network to restore services in the hospital’s emergency room and acute care.
The mayors of Sackville, Dorchester, Port Elgin and Memramcook all addressed the crowd, who braved the cold for just under an hour Wednesday at noon.
Representatives from the Mount Allison Students Union and the hospital auxiliary also spoke, as well as retired local doctor Ross Thomas. Chief Rebecca Knockwood, MLA Megan Mitton, and Mount Allison president Jean Paul Boudreau sent missives read aloud by former councillor and MC Joyce O’Neill.
Hear for yourself:
Over the summer, emergency room hours were cut down to 8 hours on weekends, and in the fall those cuts were extended to seven days a week. Then on Friday, Horizon informed local leaders that the acute care beds at the hospital would no longer admit patients, and once the four patients currently in acute care were discharged, the unit would be used exclusively for people waiting for placement in long term care facilities. That move puts the Sackville hospital in worse shape than proposed cuts back in February 2020 would have.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” O’Neill told the crowd on Wednesday, on behalf of MLA Megan Mitton. “Policy choices, bad ones, by many governments over the years have led us here.”
Wednesday’s rally is just the latest in a flurry of activity since Friday’s announcement, including a letter of frustration and anger to Horizon management from the Rural Health Action Group, and the appearance of Horizon managers at Sackville town council on Monday.
Action Group co-chair John Higham spoke to the crowd on Wednesday and echoed one of the themes of the rally, the loss of control over the town’s hospital.
“This hospital was created by the people the Sackville, was built by the people of Sackville, was managed by the people of Sackville, recruited by the people of Sackville,” said Higham. “It was our hospital. And it has been gradually merged into a corporate body that doesn’t pay any attention to that anymore.”
“What we need to do after today is to build a process that rebuilds our ownership in the hospital,” said Higham.
He also called on people to participate in an expressions of gratitude campaign, aimed at the hospital’s existing staff. The Rural Health Action Group is encouraging local individuals and groups to make homemade cards, art works, posters, cartoons, poems, or notes that express appreciation for the work of hospital staff, and add them to a box at the entrance of the Sackville hospital. These expressions of gratitude will then be exhibited in the hospital during the holiday season.
Gratitude to health care workers was another theme that ran across all speakers. Mount Allison Student Union VP Hannah Ehler brought a message of thanks from her fellow students to hospital workers.
“Students rely on your services,” said Ehler. “We see everything you are doing from stitches to saving lives, and all of us know that you deserve better.”
Ehler also had a message for the provincial department of health and Horizon. “We are concerned and we are frustrated. Not only are there reduced health care services at the hospital, I am concerned about that. But I’m also concerned about where they are going,” said Ehler. “Moncton is quite inaccessible for a lot of our students, particularly first year students and international students who do not always have access to vehicles to get there in the case of an urgent situation.”
“We are wondering,” said Ehler, “where is the urgency behind the situation? Why is this not being treated as critical as it is?”
That was a question reiterated by retired doctor Ross Thomas.
“We feel the existence of the hospital is threatened,” he told the crowd, “and that this poses far greater threat to the health of our community than the virus. But the response from Horizon and government has been as if this was just a common cold. Where’s the circuit breaker to stop this bleeding?”
Thomas called on Horizon to commit to a stronger relationship with local groups, especially the recruitment committee working as part of the Rural Health Action group, and also that they “pour some of the thousands of dollars that are being saved every day by the cuts in Sackville into the recruitment efforts.”
Two key groups fundraise for the Sackville hospital, and both were represented at the rally on Wednesday. Audrey Hicks is chair of the Sackville Memorial Hospital Auxilliary, and is a former nurse, having worked that Sackville hospital for 44 years.
“I want to say a huge thank you to the staff who are continuing on this journey having to work in such stressful situations,” said Hicks. “Not only COVID, but not knowing if they have a job tomorrow.”
Hicks laid the case for emergency and acute care in Sackville, pointing out that the hospital serves the entire region, “from Cape Tormentine to Memramcook.”
She also questioned Horizon’s commitment to recruiting nurses for the town, and relayed a story of a nurse she met who had recently moved to Sackville, but is now working in Amherst after being told there were no openings in Sackville. “Is that what recruitment is?” she asked the crowd.
Surprisingly few speakers referred back to the last large rally in support of the Sackville Memorial Hospital, but past-chair of the hospital foundation Elaine Smith did.
“On that fateful day, back in February 2020, I was chair of the foundation,” said Smith. “You will recall that the reforms that were coming in made it look like they were going to close our hospital down. I remember being asked by the media how I felt, and at the time I said I was blindsided. I noticed in the paper yesterday, one of our citizens was asked about these changes, and she said she was blindsided. And if we don’t do something, we’re going to be really blindsided again.“
Smith laid bare one of the key issues mentioned by many at the rally: that there’s a dangerous feedback loop exacerbating the staff shortages at the hospital, and that it could extend out into the town.
“Why would nurses want to stay in this hospital or even apply for jobs in this hospital, given the uncertainty at the hospital?” asked Smith. “Why would people want to move to this community, given the uncertainty of the hospital? Why would students come to Mount Allison? Or why would parents want them to send them here? Why would developers come in and want to do anything in this community? And to be perfectly honest, why would somebody like me want to stay here, if we don’t have a hospital? This is just not acceptable.”
Sackville mayor Shawn Mesheau also described the wide-ranging impact of the hospital, saying a fully functioning hospital was “the foundation on which to build everything else: education, business, the environment and our families and our neighbourhoods.”
At Monday’s council meeting, town council voted to endorse the critical letter sent by the Rural Health Action Group to Horizon, and on Wednesday the mayor urged the crowd to write their own letters to the province and Horizon management.
“Your voices need to be heard and they do matter,” said Mesheau.
RELATED:
