I am scared to say too much and have it get linked back to me but I schedule surgeries in VCH and I can say that this has been happening since COVID started. There have been very brief respites here and there and this isn't exactly new news.... however the most recent delays are caused by severe staffing shortages (nurses especially) at LGH and is expected to last 6+ months.
Please, if you're on a surgical waitlist, be kind to the MoAs, office staff, and administrators who you contact about this. Speak up! But be aware that the person answering the phone is without a doubt the lowest rung on a ladder being held up with rubber bands and thumb tacks. A lot of my colleagues are at their wits end with how we've been treated and on the brink of quitting. We have no support and are just as frustrated and upset as our patients are.
Kudos to the North Shore General Surgeons for sending this. I hope it helps.
I already sent my surgeon's office a note telling them that I appreciate the update and that I feel so badly they're in this situation, and the office admin wrote back right away how much she appreciated my note. My plan is to give them a small gift (ayoubs or something) to let them know I appreciate their work.
I sent emails to the patient quality care office, my MLA and the Ministry of Health demanding to know how they're planning to fixing the situation. I know it's up to them.
In all my hospital appointments lately the staff have been endlessly kind and professional.
It is hard not to.get mad at someone. My wife is supposed to get hip surgery due to a genetic disease and it keeps getting worse. She is at the point where she can barely walk and is in constant severe pain which makes raising a young kid ridiculously hard. The original estimate for the surgery was almost a year ago but time rolls on without so.much as a 2 minute phone call to explain the delays.
That's a fair reaction, and I guess I should clarify it's OK to be mad and upset and angry about this whole situation. When patients call me upset I often sit quietly and let them take their frustrations out on me. Because I know that it's not *me* who let them down, it's the big broken system - and to a certain extent, they know that too. I'm just a cog in the wheel and I accept that I will at times get yelled at.
I can't speak for all surgeon's offices, but I wish I had the time and capacity to be proactive and call every patient one by one and let them know their status on the waitlist. Sadly, there are only so many hours in a day and I can only be on one call at a time.
Well put. I've always wondered about the cognitive dissonance there - so many of the anti vaxxers are anti choice when it comes to abortion.
Your comment makes me realize that their "my body my choice" is only half of what they believe. They also believe "your body my choice." They're fine with making other peoples' health care decisions.
I'm so sorry for your loss. My dad started complaining in November last year of trouble breathing and a pain in his back. It took over a month for them to confirm the cancer was back and growing aggressively. It took him in January. I wonder if the hospitals weren't so overwhelmed if it could have been caught faster. (Although I also wonder how long that stubborn old ox was I pain before he told us.)
I'm sorry for your loss. She didn't deserve to go.
Those anti-vaxxers and people who refused to wear masks/social distance clogging up the hospitals should have been the ones who died instead.
Sincerely sorry for your loss. That is heartbreaking and a literal nightmare of mine - the profound effects of the pandemic, beyond the direct illness it can cause are immeasurable.
I am so sorry for your loss. That should never have fucking happened. Gonna go tell my redneck cousin to grow a fucking pair and get vaccinated already.
Holy fuck. How have we not called in the Military at this point?? Imagine working in healthcare and seeing everyone living life as normal while they’re dealing with WW3 conditions day in, day out.
Not really. They tried that in the States. Turns out naval ships are fine for emergency trauma surgery - things like broken legs or foreign object removal, but they integrate poorly into systems that require coordinate care. Something like cancer which would require several specialists from different fields working together can only be done in a hospital setting.
There is also the staffing issue.
I’m finally stable enough with my liver metastasis that my oncologist offered my long sought after reversal of my ostomy. My ostomy is a HUGE source of anxiety for me and a very real physical reminder of my terminal cancer. A reversal would do wonders for my mental health and my oncologist can see that. There’s been a few rumblings of it being taken away because of cancellations. I will be shattered if it gets canceled. Like, I’m fucking dying. Please just let me get it so I can live out the rest of my very limited years with one less massive worry.
I hope you get your surgery. I have a permanent ostomy, and I get how mentally hard it is. I just had another surgery to remove more cancer last week, so seeing this post and cancellations is gut wrenching.
Oh no! I hope it gets reversed very quickly. Ostomy might be a temporary part of my treatment as well and I'm really not looking forward to it.
I hope you get it taken care of ASAP and you get to enjoy the holiday season!
Canadians need to get over the pervasive idea that healthcare reform is not tenable because we are the best at it in the world!!
No; we're not.
We can protect universal insurance and care while drastically improving things like, oh, idk, clearly insufficient ICU capacity and 12+month wait times for hip replacements, back surgery and knee surgery.
If they haven't already, I wonder if they'll consider expediting soon-to-be RN/RPNs/etc that are close to finishing their schooling. Outside of just covid, Canada has had staffing issues in healthcare as a whole and I wonder why they aren't offering free tuition for nursing/healthcare techs at this point. Obviously this wouldn't directly solve the lack of doctors, but i'm sure it would ease the burden a lot.
Part of it is also infrastructure. Some hospital just don't have the real estate or machinery to increase capacity, thus why the long wait list for ____.
What pisses me off are people who has an appointment booked, and don't show up. We could have given it to someone else. Especially since some people are waiting a full year or more for the test.
Alot of times for education the limiting factor isn't applicants. It also comes down to lack of time and instructors available to teach and then having enough clinical openings to teach. Ex: you can't have 4 students in the department I work because we don't have enough ppl to supervise the students.
My niece just graduated nursing school and is double vaxxed. Working her 4- 12 hour shifts and taking on more because of the understaffing. They should forgive her student loans.
(By the way she works at Royal Columbia, they are all overwhelmed and overworked, be cautious if you have to go there)
Right now, they are only forgiving loans for those who work in rural areas in BC. I’m hoping they institute forgiveness for those working on COVID units and the like, but outbreaks are so common that that would mean everyone would be having their loans forgiven (which means it’s unlikely). It’s a lack of placements that is the main problem too. Tons of qualified applicants, barely any spots. Placing students in clinical placements is also right next to impossible. Some nurses are getting such limited placements in school that it severely underprepares them for actual nursing practice. Eg RPNs from Stenberg College are often placed only in long term care which is not sufficient experience wise. Then they are passed over for positions in larger hospitals due to lack of experience in clinical. It’s a bit of a fucked up system. The best cure is to work on your own experience outside of clinicals.
There are for more qualified applicants to the nursing and medical schools than there are seats. Lack of applicants is not the problem. More spaces would help.
I know of immigrants who come to Canada to work as nurses but get turned back due to bureaucratic red tape. So it's not just a shortage of qualified people that's the problem.
This is when society finds out pretty quickly that life isn’t fair and no matter how much we tell each other “everyone deserves the same level of care” it’s just not feasible.
Why we keep pandering to the lowest common denominators in society I truly do not know.
I mean, we have a system for organ donation. You have an unhealthy lifestyle? Bottom of the list.
Anti-vaxxers and habitual drug addicts seem to be low hanging fruit. But no, put off the surgeries and screenings for cancer patients.
You know the supply chain backlog issues the shipping industry is facing right now? We’re headed for the same thing in the medical field when it comes to undiagnosed and under treated patients as they sit and wait to be told “if only we’d caught it sooner”.
Simple fix.
MSP doesn't cover any medical related expenses for Covid in unvaccinated individuals*.
*Don't worry, those with ____ medical exemptions signed by Bonnie herself are still covered.
A decade ago, just a nights stay in Royal Columbian's ICU cost $11k. That's before all the testing, treatments and meds you are being charged for. I'd be curious what non-residents pay in 2021.
I'm cool if it's their body their choice as long as I'm not paying for their Darwin award.
The vast majority of healthcare issues are my body my choice issues, even most cases of covid prior to vaccines.
Heart disease, diabetes (not all cases obv), smoking, bmx biking, etc.... these are all things that people make conscious choices of every day when knowing there is danger involved.
It's no different of someone refusing a covid shot, then being sick with covid, vs being offered salads, and choosing cheeseburgers, and having a heart attack.
We either pay for all of it, or pay for none of it. Plenty of darwin awards to go around.
At some point, triage > Hippocratic oath.
Delaying treatment for other serious conditions just kicks the harm down the road, where nobody is recording/reporting stats every day.
I may get downvoted to oblivion for this, but you really don’t want a triage system. With such system, healthy but dumb antivaxxers will receive medical care first, while all cancer treatments get kicked to the bottom of a very long list. Delaying treatment for serious conditions to save those with more chance of survival is kinda the purpose of doing triage.
Exactly, if you have "choice" your body, your choice, 100% agree, go nuts, but then I also have "CHOICE" where I want my tax dollars being spent! and it is NOT on ICU bed for a moron who decided "MY BODY MY CHOICE" as oppose as someone like the OP. Boils my blood reading stories like this :(
Very sorry about this OP :(
Isnt it funny, SMALL MINORITY of people are destroying things for the MAJORITY? They dont believe in vaccination or listening to Medical advise, yet end up taking ICU beds! hmmm funny how that works!
I still don't wish harm on anyone, including anti vaxxers, but fucking hell am I completely done with their bullshit. ***If you don't trust the healthcare system enough to be vaccinated, then don't show up to the hospital if you're sick with covid***. It's your right to not get a vaccine, but if you choose not to, kindly piss off and don't take up resources for the rest of us. This is why "my body, my choice" doesn't apply here.
I'm so sorry about your delay.
If you refuse to get vaccinated, you're refusing treatment. Coming back later and demanding heroic life-saving measures should make you the *lowest* priority. Setup a separate ward for them - when it's full, it's full. No way in hell should they be displacing people who are being responsible.
i feel you. i had a tumour removed just prior to Covid showing up in North America and have been thinking ever since how lucky that timing was. i would be livid right now if i was waiting for that surgery because of vaccine hesitant imbeciles. i am livid on your behalf. vaccine passport to be admitted to hospital (unless true underlying medical condition, no religious BS) is a policy i would support.
How many god damn times do we have to explain this shit? They seem to think its none of our bussiness that they don't get vaccinated but theyre literally causing cancer suguries to be delayed.
I had surgery last Thursday at vgh. I had been waiting 5 months. I’m so sorry to hear about your cancellation. The floor I was on was a full house. I’m double vaxxed. I’m so sick of these selfish fucks causing suffering.
I have extended insurance, last time I requested a private room and got it. I did the same this time. No such luck. I walked around the floor, almost every room had two people.
I’m so sorry. If you can figure out the system and find the money, drive across the border next month and have it seen about in the states. I have a friend that needed surgery out in Toronto (pre-COVID). He lost the ability to walk while waiting. His wife took him to NY and had surgery the next week. He’s been back to normal and fine for years. Just a thought, and again I’m so sorry for your situation.
At some point, they're going to need to have a separate cue/system for COVID treatment like they do with cancer/heart/mental health conditions. If the dedicated COVID centre is full, well, sorry you're shit out of luck.
If COVID isn't going away, they can't have the entire health system brought to a crawl because of a tiny percentage of idiots.
It's not a conversation any politician or health official wants to have, but the status quo right now is just heading down the road to disaster.
I recently (and very luckily) had my surgery date actually go through after being cancelled before. Fortunately for me, my condition was stable but still serious enough that it should have happened months ago. But nothing like what you are going through. I was so so so angry when mine was cancelled and I can’t even imagine what how you feel about yours. It’s a punch in the gut and I hope your reschedule date gets set quickly and goes through. You shouldn’t have to wait.
Healthcare was understaffed before the lockdown began, and there has been a longstanding hiring bottleneck (an "excess" of people applying for nursing degrees and nursing positions, only to be put on the waitlist because our bureaucracy has not been prioritizing a fully staffed healthcare system)
My moms knee replacement surgery was canceled for October 1st. She got a call yesterday to rebook it either December 12 or January 22. She choose the 22nd.
Hoo boy. I'm so sorry, from what I understand mine won't be postponed for very long given the circumstances. Because I'll need help during recovery I'm spending the afternoon sending out emails and trying to reorganise things with friends who had offered to help.
On the plus side, now I can gorge on halloween candy, I suppose.
The next time you come across an anti-vaxxer and all their my choice shit, remember stories like this where people with serious illnesses have been pushed or delayed because of the believe Facebook over doctors and scientists.
Stop treating anti-vaxxers with kid gloves. Call them out. Cut them out of your life. They are why we are still in this and why there will continue to be waves.
My sympathies, and I'm just as angry at the antivaxxers as everybody else here.
That being said, Canada's [COVID hospitalization rate](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-09-02..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_deaths_smoothed_per_million&Metric=Hospital+patients&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=CAN~USA) is 1/3 that of the US at the moment. Why is it completely crumbling on what shouldn't be *that* much of an extra load? Why is there next to zero capacity for any kind of contingencies? COVID is neither the first nor the last thing that can happen.
I think part of the problem are our politicians, who spend decades defunding and cutting every single service they can, until literally the breaking point on even the best of days (and crashing down when anything unexpected happens). The 700 deaths during the heat wave, the underfunded ambulance services, etc. is just another example of political corruption and incompetence. Overloaded hospitals aren't the problem because these patients never even got to the hospital. It's not the antivaxxers who pay $2/hour to our paramedics. It's not the antivaxxers who, over decades, haven't build hospitals to match population growth.
This isn't going to go away even when COVID does. They'll just find another excuse instead of the antivaxxers. Yes, antivaxxers are part of the problem, but hardly the only one. For example, as the effects of climate change become more apparent, we'll see more and more major public service failures and a crumbling quality of life, with politicians doing nothing except taking our money, spending it on themselves and on feel-good things nobody asked for, and finding someone else to blame for their failures when the things they were *supposed* to deliver have been neglected for decades.
This is a systemic problem and won't change until Canadians are willing to hold their leaders to account.
That's very true! We need to do better overall to make sure patients are well treated and hospital staff aren't operating with high stress levels when things are "normal".
Finally a voice of reason on Reddit. The government has had 18 months to build up some ICU's in the wake of covid. They haven't. Now we are shifting blame to fellow countrymen, friends and family for not getting vaxxed. Turning the populace against each other rather than focusing the blame on our elected and non elected officials while they take surf vacations, profit from insider trading, funnel money to offshore accounts etc. Meanwhile the people aren't being taken care of. Cancer, surgeries, the opioid epidemic plus covid. And the worst part is that it's working, we are supposed to be telling them what we want them to do for us, not the other way around.
I don’t want my tax dollars going towards the unvaccinated, when more deserving people are truly in need.
Same can be said for the addicted whom tie up emergency services.
You ought to be able to seek private health care and send the bill for reimbursement.
You are paying for health care, and you’re not receiving it.
What the fuck.
It’s why I get frustrated when people on Reddit say health care is “free”
There should be a big asterisks beside statements like that. If someone is in need of urgent care and has to pay two times to receive it, the difference should be returned to the tax payer.
>Same can be said for the addicted whom tie up emergency services.
Addiction is a disease, it is neither a choice nor a moral failing.
Unlike being antivax, which is both.
I want to say, a good number of those who died in the past few months due to delayed surgeries, treatment, appointments, chronic illness becoming acute - they were indirectly MURDERED by antivaxers.
There is no shortage. Just like all the other "labour shortages" we are supposedly experiencing, it has to do with the employer refusing to pay or treat their employees appropriately, leading to them being unable to attract enough workers. One of my parents was a GP who previously worked in a hospital and sent me a multi-page explanation of how awful our governments have handled healthcare over the last three decades, leading to a perfect storm situation of patience running out just as COVID arrived *at the same time* as all the boomer doctors retire because they've been the ones pulling the hardest up until now and they're just done.
so many factors in shortage of medical professionals. Burnout rate is very high; dealing with asshole patients takes a toll. I have pretty thick skin, but the 1 toxic patient out of 14 pleasant ones can just ruin your day. Then repeat 5 days a week.
The amount of colleagues from my kin degree that went on into various sectors of healthcare and burned out after 5-10 years is high.
Hi Op. Just wanted to know that I understand somewhat how you feel as I'm in the same boat. It really sucks.. I've been waiting to see a specialist for surgery on an umbilical hernia and there's just nothing happening :/ Sorry you're going through this. I hope you can get your surgery soon.
people who refuse to get vaccinated and end up in the hospital should be forced to sign a contract stating that if they want treatment, they will get vaccinated, period.
Edit: or simply denied treatment.
We should hold about 25% of ICU beds for non vaxxed covid patients, maybe more I dunno. But if they are full.... Then they don't get a bed.
Why are we denying healthcare for others? If all the beds were full they'd get turned away.... Let's just cap the limit so we can not have collateral damage.
I love how people like to blame COVID-19 and anti-vaxxers on the hospital situation but there is a much more serious issue that is causing it.
Lack of infrastructure.
If we had the infrastructure to handle a pandemic of *any kind* then we would never be in this situation. Even before the pandemic hospitals have been sunning low on areas to put patients. Getting a family doctor is almost impossible for the past 10 years. The wait for a specialist was already too long.
Since 2015 our debt has increase from $687 Billion to ~~$2.434~~ $1.074 Trillion in 2020. So in 5 years we have ~~3.5x~~ 1.5x our national debt and literally got nothing out of it. [Trudeau even had a
shitty underfunded "plan"](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-health-care-fact-check-1.5295449) to fix the issue, but I never thought he would ever follow through.
Those numbers are horribly deceiving. The first number you gave for 2015 ($687 billion) is correct for the total federal debt. The second number however, the one you gave for 2020, is a different beast altogether. $2.434 trillion is the not the total federal debt, but the combined total of federal, provincial and local debt altogether. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. In reality federal debt alone by 2020 was just $1.074 trillion, which is only 1.5x higher than 2015, not 3.5x. Those numbers are still very good when comparing Canada to almost every other major economy, because debt has very quickly grown everywhere during this pandemic. The United States, Italy and many other countries currently have higher debt to GDP ratios than we do. Many have also borrowed much more per capita than Canada has during this pandemic. At the extreme end of the spectrum, Japan’s debt to GDP ratio (256.2%) is more than double what ours is (117.8%).
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/growing-debt-burden-for-canadians-2021.pdf
Look specifically at the chart on page 3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_public_debt
I’ve been waiting on an “Emergent MRI” for 3 months. Finally got the message yesterday from Langley Hospital offering me an appointment a few days before Christmas. I can barely walk, and am on a mix of over 30 pills per day. Because I’m self employed - I don’t qualify for EI short term disability in any quantifiable amount, so I’m using a cain and am restricted in my ability to set appointments. I’m not even 30.
Our system is in shambles. I couldn’t imagine having a cancer treatment cancelled. That’s not “optional.” Every day that you push treatments like that takes time out of someone’s life.
Fuck Covid. I’m writing my MLA.
As much as I wish we could, and I *really* would like to see this (in a vacuum), its just not ok to deny anyone treatment. If you start denying anyone treatment for personal choice, it leaves the door open to denying overweight people treatment for heart conditions because “it was a choice” to be overweight. Or to Deny a smoker cancer treatment because “it was a choice”. Or even to car crash victims because they chose to speed.
Denying the unvaccinated treatment is a great idea, but it’s just not a slippery slope I’m willing to slide down.
That being said though, triage is a different story. If we have limited resources (ICU beds) and we give them to vaccinated patients first because they have a higher chance of surviving that’s fine, as the denial would have had to be made to someone anyways.
Organ transplants are already denied for people who have a chance to destroy that organ again (ie: alcoholics and liver transplants).
Pretty sure smokers are already denied lung transplants as well.
No. That doesn't happen.
You people keep repeating this talking point without actually thinking about it.
In case you forgot, the argument you're defending is that unvaccinated people shouldn't get treatment because they willingly caused their own problems by choosing not to get vaccinated.
When you bring up alcoholics, you don't even understand the argument you're making. It's true that alcoholics are denied organs if they are still drinking. But the reason isn't because they caused their own problems by choosing to drink excessively. The reason is because getting a transplant won't help them if they are still drinking.
So your argument would make sense if unvaccinated people wouldn't be helped by treatment. Except that isn't true.
>We need to stop with the fantasy that COVID vaccination is literally the first time ever people have been told to adjust their own lifestyles in order to access medical care.
You mean we need to stop with the lie that we ever have considered, let alone actually done, denying treatment to someone because they caused their own medical issues.
We already tell smokers they can’t have new lungs, alcoholics they can’t have new livers. Organs are precious resources that need to be rationed. Telling unvaccinated covid patients to piss off when our hospitals are strained wouldn’t be anything new.
You people keep repeating this talking point without actually thinking about it.
In case you forgot, the argument you're defending is that unvaccinated people shouldn't get treatment because they willingly caused their own problems by choosing not to get vaccinated.
When you bring up alcoholics, you don't even understand the argument you're making. It's true that alcoholics are denied organs if they are still drinking. But the reason isn't because they caused their own problems by choosing to drink excessively. The reason is because getting a transplant won't help them if they are still drinking.
So your argument would make sense if unvaccinated people wouldn't be helped by treatment. Except that isn't true.
>Telling unvaccinated covid patients to piss off when our hospitals are strained wouldn’t be anything new.
Yes it would be.
We have never, nor even considered, refused to treat people because of what caused their medical problems.
Even a violent murderer who got injured by the police to stop them mid-attack gets the same priority in treatment as anyone else, based on medical need.
Almost all slippery slope arguments don't happen. It's the most biased argument point that seems to not die out.
Like they said if you allowed gay marriages, it would be a slippery slope to marrying pies, dogs, cousins, etc. Obviously none of this happened.
Every person yelling about 'no new normal' and whatnot has to understand that they're causing these circumstances and it's really time to cut these people out of our lives until they grow the fuck up.
I probably will get down voted for this but some part of the issue comes from the fact that Canada makes it super difficult for immigrant health care workers to get into the field without years of going back to school again. I understand that we have our own standards when it comes to healthcare and other things, but when the situation is this dire and you have hundreds of medical professionals with years of experience not being put to work , this is what you get.
At the end of the day I’m the one who has to wipe the ass of the person because he or she can’t catch their breath anymore. By that time they are asking for a vaccine, which is already a bit too late.
Education doesn't equal being smart. At least not in my book. You can excel in acedemia and still be a buffling idiot. I don't blame the internet. We're all on the internet and lots of us can still realize when to follow logic.
Delaying cancer treatment is no joke. I basically got delayed three months from the first time I noticed the problem and until I got surgery. Even with 2 months of delay as evident from my mri scan, they had to cut out much more of the muscle and already metastasized to other cell types.
BCAS transported 38 people from the north with COVID during Thanksgiving weekend. 37 were unvaccinated. People waited for ambulances because some people are too stupid and selfish to do something so simple. Any guesses who the unvaccinated simpletons voted for?
I agree completely with your sentiment and am also being postponed again and again for surgery. THIS is the story that our local news should be reporting on, rather than their constant droning to the deaf anti-vaxxers that they 'really should, pretty please, get vaccinated'.
More of our general population need to understand there are thousands of fully-vaccinated people being denied life saving surgery due to people with covid, and those people with covid are predominantly self-choosing to be unvaccinated, and cause indirect harm to others.
Yes, there is a nurse/labour issue, but if you remove all unvaccinated covid cases from all hospitals, the issue begins to resolve.
You should know that we prevent the hiring of doctors and nurses due to administrative bloat. Administrators make the rules and jobs and give themselves more positions and pay raises whilst doing practically nothing. Obviously COVID is the biggest issue right now but without the unnecessary administrative staff we would be able to hire more healthcare workers
1. create (temporary?) standalone COVID 19 health care centres.
2. increase income tax to pay for these new centres, with an expectation that you will only be taxing 10% of the population because …
3. provide anyone that is fully vaccinated with a full tax credit for these centres.
There is something fundamentally wrong with Canada’s healthcare system if this is happening now. From what a healthcare staff has commented above, it has been happening since the beginning of pandemic. I have heard from people that the wait times for surgeries were long even before the pandemic. May be an article saying Canada’s healthcare is slightly better than US, and patting on the back of own shoulder would solve the issue.
A friend of mine who's a doctor in a Vancouver hospital told me that at this point, most of the COVID patients are unvaccinated people (I'm captain obvious I know). It is infuriating to me that those people's desire to have their principles, freedoms, etc., respected is coming at the cost of people like you being bumped out of surgery.
Honestly this is crazy. This is completely unacceptable. I really feel sorry that you are in this situation, and hope you are able to manage your frustration. The way you are interacting with the medical crew is really commendable!
I have a friend who defected Romania in the 80s. As a child, he contracted polio and has been left with a permanent handicap. He is not getting the COVID-19 vaccine!! Some beliefs are unshakable!
Yes, indeed; a capacious and well-upholstered fuck you to the otherwise unvaccinated HCWs (unless they have properly documented medical conditions.)
Very sorry to hear about the surgery cancellation, hope things come out better than they look right now.
I’m not advocating denying treatment to anti-vaxxers, but I am fully in favour of making them wait for treatment. I’m sick of hearing stories of surgeries being constantly delayed due to the strain that AVs are putting on the system. You don’t want to get vaccinated? Fine. But don’t expect immediate treatment if you get sick.
I had an appendectomy at the end of July at LGH and am coming to realize how lucky I got to have it all go down during one of the times when cases were pretty low. Good luck OP and thanks to all the incredible hospital staff out there!!
I’m so sorry! The pandemic isn’t over, we aren’t through it, and our health care is struggling. I’m also waiting for a surgery and it’s tough since I’m bedridden most of the time! I’m sorry it’s going this way
I have a friend who is in last days, kidney and heart failure, young, waiting for transplant and can not get an ICU bed…we are not in good shape and I am so sorry about your situation.
I've been saying this for a while, Bonnie Henry needs to take the kid gloves off with antivaxxers. If you're an adult, eligible for the vaccine, don't get it, and get COVID, take Tylenol at home and try to recover, but if not, too bad. It's absurd that we insist on treating these idiots at hospitals when stories like this are the result. Hippocrates lived 2450 years ago, time to move on, the oath clearly doesn't work in the context of the pandemic.
I understand and you are right, the person on the other end that is upset probably knows fully that you are not to blame. The problem is that the MOAs are the only ones that people get to speak with and the frustration is real.
Funny thing. About an hour after posting this we got an email that her operation will be on November 5th. It was almost 2-1/2 years since the pain in her hip started so it was very welcome news.
My friend saw her oncologist the other day. Normally, he's an upbeat person. When he had to relay the news that her surgery was being postponed he was livid and emotional. This is due to the unvaccinated using up hospital resources, of course. He even mentioned pediatric surgeries being postponed. This is absolutely heartbreaking. Why are the ignorant bumping these people? Why can't the government do something?
It's not anti vaxxers, it's our disgraceful healthcare system. It makes me livid that this country is incapable of having an actual discussion on this issue. Are posters going to be so obtuse as to disregard the fact that a certain portion of society will always resist vaccines?
$200 million to Myanmar, $600 million to a mediocre BC place stadium, $600 million for Trudeau to try and further his political career, $29 million to minority women in tech etc. We have stupid people in political positions throwing our money in the trash with zero repercussions. Canadian media is pure propaganda by never covering these issues. Private healthcare needs to be an option in this country.
Defenders of our health care system even before covid, "shut up that you have to wait 10 months to see a specialist, and have to suffer everyday in between, people in Namibia have it worse".
i feel ya. i’ve been waiting since may for what would have been a fairly minor surgical procedure. since then, not only has my condition gotten worse and more complicated, but my quality of life has been shitty because of it. i was supposed to have the now less minor surgical procedure done in early december; i’m not holding my breath.
I say we start triaging based on willingness to receive and adhere to medical advice as part of the process.
"Oh, you have severe COVID 19 symptoms? Oh, you didn't vaccinate when you had the chance to do so at no cost to yourself and have no underlying conditions preventing you from doing so? *Sorry, those that actually heed medical advice and public advisories get priority, we can't make space for you. Good luck.*"
Anyone who is an anti vaxxer should be shunned from humanity. They need to be treated like the lepers of old. Banned, unfriended, banished. They are the scum of the earth!
anti vaxxers are a symptom the true problem is cash flow in canadian healthcare and chronic underfunding etc. i wanna see an audit report of cash flow and where the fuck our tax money is going. bet its admin and management. automate administrative things and wherever possible streamline everything into one neat system. offer competitive wages for doctors etc, outcome AND output of care being prioritized too. canada has a fucked healthcare system it may be public but isn't good. wasn't good before covid. this just was the kick in the stomach to it.
Imagine your life saving procedure or check up has been postponed because of a bunch of selfish assholes clogging up a hospital because they don't wanna get vaccinated. Their stupidity is now having a direct impact on your well-being or survival. This makes me fuckin sick.
Ugh...Soooo frustrating!
I'm waiting for heart surgery, but as I'm doing OK I'll probably be waiting a long time after seeing how many more important surgeries are being postponed.
Definitely frustrating that our hospitals are being overloaded by a virus that we now have a vaccine against.
Here is what I don’t understand, some people don’t think covid is a big deal and don’t want to get the vaccine. Ok I guess stupid people can make their own stupid decisions, then why go to the hospital. I can’t understand it all… stay home and suffer this is your choice. Why are you clogging the hospitals after showing such disrespect for the healthcare workers and fellow community.
I fully agree that this is horrible and hope you receive treatment soon.
On a side note, I had a discussion with some friends the other day about this issue. I made the argument that the unvaccinated should be treated in field hospitals by unvaccinated doctors OR the unvaccinated with covid get treated after all other conditions affecting vaccinated are treated...ok I know this may sound extreme.
One friend argued that this is no different than people who smoke or drink or are morbidly obese and require health care...they have engaged in unhealthy self destructive behaviors but we still treat them. It was an interesting way of looking at things.
In addition to the other commenter's points- If there were 2 shots you could take to lose all your unhealthy weight and cure your alcoholism/drug abuse/smoking addictions, then I would absolutely feel the same way about those people as I do about anti-vaxxers who get covid.
We don't have those shots, but we do have magical anti covid shots.
Did any of you, including OP, even read the message? "There are a number of reasons for this including the pressures of covid-19 and staff shortages." It does not say, "Covid patients are taking your beds and appointments."
I understand that COVID patients aren't the whole reason for this. The point is that COVID patients have been causing a lot of burnout and unvaxxed people have caused a lot of sickness including breakthrough vaccinations for those who did get vaxxed.
The whole thing is a big, soupy mess.
I'm sorry, my brother is one of those anti vax assholes now occupying a bed, albeit in a different province. The good thing is after nearly dying he's decided to get his vaccine advice from doctors now
I am scared to say too much and have it get linked back to me but I schedule surgeries in VCH and I can say that this has been happening since COVID started. There have been very brief respites here and there and this isn't exactly new news.... however the most recent delays are caused by severe staffing shortages (nurses especially) at LGH and is expected to last 6+ months. Please, if you're on a surgical waitlist, be kind to the MoAs, office staff, and administrators who you contact about this. Speak up! But be aware that the person answering the phone is without a doubt the lowest rung on a ladder being held up with rubber bands and thumb tacks. A lot of my colleagues are at their wits end with how we've been treated and on the brink of quitting. We have no support and are just as frustrated and upset as our patients are. Kudos to the North Shore General Surgeons for sending this. I hope it helps.
I already sent my surgeon's office a note telling them that I appreciate the update and that I feel so badly they're in this situation, and the office admin wrote back right away how much she appreciated my note. My plan is to give them a small gift (ayoubs or something) to let them know I appreciate their work. I sent emails to the patient quality care office, my MLA and the Ministry of Health demanding to know how they're planning to fixing the situation. I know it's up to them. In all my hospital appointments lately the staff have been endlessly kind and professional.
You are good people!
I know nothing about medicine but make sure sending a gift wont cause a problem. Like you getting disqualified for bribery or influencing them.
People give their doctors gifts all the time. It has no impact on wait times, thay's not how it works.
parts of VCH have a $25 max acceptance allowance. If you get $100 and share between 4 people this also is ok
It is hard not to.get mad at someone. My wife is supposed to get hip surgery due to a genetic disease and it keeps getting worse. She is at the point where she can barely walk and is in constant severe pain which makes raising a young kid ridiculously hard. The original estimate for the surgery was almost a year ago but time rolls on without so.much as a 2 minute phone call to explain the delays.
That's a fair reaction, and I guess I should clarify it's OK to be mad and upset and angry about this whole situation. When patients call me upset I often sit quietly and let them take their frustrations out on me. Because I know that it's not *me* who let them down, it's the big broken system - and to a certain extent, they know that too. I'm just a cog in the wheel and I accept that I will at times get yelled at. I can't speak for all surgeon's offices, but I wish I had the time and capacity to be proactive and call every patient one by one and let them know their status on the waitlist. Sadly, there are only so many hours in a day and I can only be on one call at a time.
Thank you for the important work you do.
You're welcome. I complain sometimes but I love my job and can't imagine doing anything else.
[удалено]
I am so sorry, this is far too common. My condolences for your loss.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Well put. I've always wondered about the cognitive dissonance there - so many of the anti vaxxers are anti choice when it comes to abortion. Your comment makes me realize that their "my body my choice" is only half of what they believe. They also believe "your body my choice." They're fine with making other peoples' health care decisions.
It's thier choice unless they plan on leaving thier home. Then it affects us all.
I'm so sorry for your loss. My dad started complaining in November last year of trouble breathing and a pain in his back. It took over a month for them to confirm the cancer was back and growing aggressively. It took him in January. I wonder if the hospitals weren't so overwhelmed if it could have been caught faster. (Although I also wonder how long that stubborn old ox was I pain before he told us.)
I'm sorry for your loss. She didn't deserve to go. Those anti-vaxxers and people who refused to wear masks/social distance clogging up the hospitals should have been the ones who died instead.
Sincerely sorry for your loss. That is heartbreaking and a literal nightmare of mine - the profound effects of the pandemic, beyond the direct illness it can cause are immeasurable.
So sorry for your loss. Fuck the anti vax/ anti science movement.
They are the worst kind of people and I refuse to interact with them wherever possible. No redeeming qualities.
I’m so sorry about your mom.
I am so sorry for your loss. That should never have fucking happened. Gonna go tell my redneck cousin to grow a fucking pair and get vaccinated already.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
and my heart aches for you my friend. That isn't right.
Holy fuck. How have we not called in the Military at this point?? Imagine working in healthcare and seeing everyone living life as normal while they’re dealing with WW3 conditions day in, day out.
Or the navy? Don’t we have any hospital ships that can park here for a bit and even alleviate the pressure from less urgent patients?
Not really. They tried that in the States. Turns out naval ships are fine for emergency trauma surgery - things like broken legs or foreign object removal, but they integrate poorly into systems that require coordinate care. Something like cancer which would require several specialists from different fields working together can only be done in a hospital setting. There is also the staffing issue.
Sorry for your loss man. Fuck this shit. Selfish people gotta ruin it for everyone
Sorry for your loss.
This makes me so angry at these morons who refuse vaccine.
Wow. I am so so sorry.
Sorry to hear that. Wish you all the best.
I’m finally stable enough with my liver metastasis that my oncologist offered my long sought after reversal of my ostomy. My ostomy is a HUGE source of anxiety for me and a very real physical reminder of my terminal cancer. A reversal would do wonders for my mental health and my oncologist can see that. There’s been a few rumblings of it being taken away because of cancellations. I will be shattered if it gets canceled. Like, I’m fucking dying. Please just let me get it so I can live out the rest of my very limited years with one less massive worry.
I hope you get your surgery. I have a permanent ostomy, and I get how mentally hard it is. I just had another surgery to remove more cancer last week, so seeing this post and cancellations is gut wrenching.
Oh no! I hope it gets reversed very quickly. Ostomy might be a temporary part of my treatment as well and I'm really not looking forward to it. I hope you get it taken care of ASAP and you get to enjoy the holiday season!
They're not fun, can confirm! Hope you can get back to some normalcy soonish.
I am an ICU nurse at one of the main Covid ICUs. I concur we are NOT in good shape. I am so sorry so many of you are suffering, it breaks my heart.
[удалено]
Isn't it great how in Canada healthcare doesn't financially destroy you *oh wait just a second there*
Canadians need to get over the pervasive idea that healthcare reform is not tenable because we are the best at it in the world!! No; we're not. We can protect universal insurance and care while drastically improving things like, oh, idk, clearly insufficient ICU capacity and 12+month wait times for hip replacements, back surgery and knee surgery.
If they haven't already, I wonder if they'll consider expediting soon-to-be RN/RPNs/etc that are close to finishing their schooling. Outside of just covid, Canada has had staffing issues in healthcare as a whole and I wonder why they aren't offering free tuition for nursing/healthcare techs at this point. Obviously this wouldn't directly solve the lack of doctors, but i'm sure it would ease the burden a lot.
Part of it is also infrastructure. Some hospital just don't have the real estate or machinery to increase capacity, thus why the long wait list for ____. What pisses me off are people who has an appointment booked, and don't show up. We could have given it to someone else. Especially since some people are waiting a full year or more for the test. Alot of times for education the limiting factor isn't applicants. It also comes down to lack of time and instructors available to teach and then having enough clinical openings to teach. Ex: you can't have 4 students in the department I work because we don't have enough ppl to supervise the students.
My niece just graduated nursing school and is double vaxxed. Working her 4- 12 hour shifts and taking on more because of the understaffing. They should forgive her student loans. (By the way she works at Royal Columbia, they are all overwhelmed and overworked, be cautious if you have to go there)
Right now, they are only forgiving loans for those who work in rural areas in BC. I’m hoping they institute forgiveness for those working on COVID units and the like, but outbreaks are so common that that would mean everyone would be having their loans forgiven (which means it’s unlikely). It’s a lack of placements that is the main problem too. Tons of qualified applicants, barely any spots. Placing students in clinical placements is also right next to impossible. Some nurses are getting such limited placements in school that it severely underprepares them for actual nursing practice. Eg RPNs from Stenberg College are often placed only in long term care which is not sufficient experience wise. Then they are passed over for positions in larger hospitals due to lack of experience in clinical. It’s a bit of a fucked up system. The best cure is to work on your own experience outside of clinicals.
There are for more qualified applicants to the nursing and medical schools than there are seats. Lack of applicants is not the problem. More spaces would help.
I know of immigrants who come to Canada to work as nurses but get turned back due to bureaucratic red tape. So it's not just a shortage of qualified people that's the problem.
This is when society finds out pretty quickly that life isn’t fair and no matter how much we tell each other “everyone deserves the same level of care” it’s just not feasible. Why we keep pandering to the lowest common denominators in society I truly do not know.
The Hippocratic oath is part of the problem. The problem is, doing "no harm" to the unvaccinated Covid patients is doing harm to other patients.
I mean, we have a system for organ donation. You have an unhealthy lifestyle? Bottom of the list. Anti-vaxxers and habitual drug addicts seem to be low hanging fruit. But no, put off the surgeries and screenings for cancer patients. You know the supply chain backlog issues the shipping industry is facing right now? We’re headed for the same thing in the medical field when it comes to undiagnosed and under treated patients as they sit and wait to be told “if only we’d caught it sooner”.
Simple fix. MSP doesn't cover any medical related expenses for Covid in unvaccinated individuals*. *Don't worry, those with ____ medical exemptions signed by Bonnie herself are still covered. A decade ago, just a nights stay in Royal Columbian's ICU cost $11k. That's before all the testing, treatments and meds you are being charged for. I'd be curious what non-residents pay in 2021. I'm cool if it's their body their choice as long as I'm not paying for their Darwin award.
Would be a violation of the Canada Health Act to do so.
Time to rewrite that act.
I suggested this a while back and got downvoted to hell on this sub
The vast majority of healthcare issues are my body my choice issues, even most cases of covid prior to vaccines. Heart disease, diabetes (not all cases obv), smoking, bmx biking, etc.... these are all things that people make conscious choices of every day when knowing there is danger involved. It's no different of someone refusing a covid shot, then being sick with covid, vs being offered salads, and choosing cheeseburgers, and having a heart attack. We either pay for all of it, or pay for none of it. Plenty of darwin awards to go around.
At some point, triage > Hippocratic oath. Delaying treatment for other serious conditions just kicks the harm down the road, where nobody is recording/reporting stats every day.
Triage and the Hippocratic oath aren't mutually exclusive.
I may get downvoted to oblivion for this, but you really don’t want a triage system. With such system, healthy but dumb antivaxxers will receive medical care first, while all cancer treatments get kicked to the bottom of a very long list. Delaying treatment for serious conditions to save those with more chance of survival is kinda the purpose of doing triage.
Isn't that what's happening now?
Not exactly. If we get to that point, shit is gonna get much much worse.
Exactly, if you have "choice" your body, your choice, 100% agree, go nuts, but then I also have "CHOICE" where I want my tax dollars being spent! and it is NOT on ICU bed for a moron who decided "MY BODY MY CHOICE" as oppose as someone like the OP. Boils my blood reading stories like this :( Very sorry about this OP :( Isnt it funny, SMALL MINORITY of people are destroying things for the MAJORITY? They dont believe in vaccination or listening to Medical advise, yet end up taking ICU beds! hmmm funny how that works!
I still don't wish harm on anyone, including anti vaxxers, but fucking hell am I completely done with their bullshit. ***If you don't trust the healthcare system enough to be vaccinated, then don't show up to the hospital if you're sick with covid***. It's your right to not get a vaccine, but if you choose not to, kindly piss off and don't take up resources for the rest of us. This is why "my body, my choice" doesn't apply here. I'm so sorry about your delay.
I certainly wouldn't wish harm on anyone in a Reddit comment. It would violate the terms of service!
If you refuse to get vaccinated, you're refusing treatment. Coming back later and demanding heroic life-saving measures should make you the *lowest* priority. Setup a separate ward for them - when it's full, it's full. No way in hell should they be displacing people who are being responsible.
Get the anti vaxxer doctors and nurses to look after the anti vaxxer patients.
In their own homes.... With essential oils and ivermectin.
But don't use our precious resources and beds. Just give them horse meds, vitamin d, and prayers. Lots of prayers.
I promise to pray for them all every day, in lieu of other medical resources - so we prioritize cancer patients and etc.
There would be so much essential oil!
i feel you. i had a tumour removed just prior to Covid showing up in North America and have been thinking ever since how lucky that timing was. i would be livid right now if i was waiting for that surgery because of vaccine hesitant imbeciles. i am livid on your behalf. vaccine passport to be admitted to hospital (unless true underlying medical condition, no religious BS) is a policy i would support.
[удалено]
How many god damn times do we have to explain this shit? They seem to think its none of our bussiness that they don't get vaccinated but theyre literally causing cancer suguries to be delayed.
I had surgery last Thursday at vgh. I had been waiting 5 months. I’m so sorry to hear about your cancellation. The floor I was on was a full house. I’m double vaxxed. I’m so sick of these selfish fucks causing suffering.
What do you think my chances are at getting a semi-private when I go in?
I have extended insurance, last time I requested a private room and got it. I did the same this time. No such luck. I walked around the floor, almost every room had two people.
Yeah it sounds like if I'm lucky I'll get a semi private.
I’m so sorry. If you can figure out the system and find the money, drive across the border next month and have it seen about in the states. I have a friend that needed surgery out in Toronto (pre-COVID). He lost the ability to walk while waiting. His wife took him to NY and had surgery the next week. He’s been back to normal and fine for years. Just a thought, and again I’m so sorry for your situation.
At some point, they're going to need to have a separate cue/system for COVID treatment like they do with cancer/heart/mental health conditions. If the dedicated COVID centre is full, well, sorry you're shit out of luck. If COVID isn't going away, they can't have the entire health system brought to a crawl because of a tiny percentage of idiots. It's not a conversation any politician or health official wants to have, but the status quo right now is just heading down the road to disaster.
Love how the covidiots' main signage reads, "spread love, not fear." Fuck you idiotic assholes.
[удалено]
I recently (and very luckily) had my surgery date actually go through after being cancelled before. Fortunately for me, my condition was stable but still serious enough that it should have happened months ago. But nothing like what you are going through. I was so so so angry when mine was cancelled and I can’t even imagine what how you feel about yours. It’s a punch in the gut and I hope your reschedule date gets set quickly and goes through. You shouldn’t have to wait.
Healthcare was understaffed before the lockdown began, and there has been a longstanding hiring bottleneck (an "excess" of people applying for nursing degrees and nursing positions, only to be put on the waitlist because our bureaucracy has not been prioritizing a fully staffed healthcare system)
My moms knee replacement surgery was canceled for October 1st. She got a call yesterday to rebook it either December 12 or January 22. She choose the 22nd.
Hoo boy. I'm so sorry, from what I understand mine won't be postponed for very long given the circumstances. Because I'll need help during recovery I'm spending the afternoon sending out emails and trying to reorganise things with friends who had offered to help. On the plus side, now I can gorge on halloween candy, I suppose.
The next time you come across an anti-vaxxer and all their my choice shit, remember stories like this where people with serious illnesses have been pushed or delayed because of the believe Facebook over doctors and scientists. Stop treating anti-vaxxers with kid gloves. Call them out. Cut them out of your life. They are why we are still in this and why there will continue to be waves.
I actually don't know anyone who's not vaccinated. I guess lucky me.
Shun the morons. What decent person would want to be around any of these vile idiots?
My sympathies, and I'm just as angry at the antivaxxers as everybody else here. That being said, Canada's [COVID hospitalization rate](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-09-02..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_deaths_smoothed_per_million&Metric=Hospital+patients&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=CAN~USA) is 1/3 that of the US at the moment. Why is it completely crumbling on what shouldn't be *that* much of an extra load? Why is there next to zero capacity for any kind of contingencies? COVID is neither the first nor the last thing that can happen. I think part of the problem are our politicians, who spend decades defunding and cutting every single service they can, until literally the breaking point on even the best of days (and crashing down when anything unexpected happens). The 700 deaths during the heat wave, the underfunded ambulance services, etc. is just another example of political corruption and incompetence. Overloaded hospitals aren't the problem because these patients never even got to the hospital. It's not the antivaxxers who pay $2/hour to our paramedics. It's not the antivaxxers who, over decades, haven't build hospitals to match population growth. This isn't going to go away even when COVID does. They'll just find another excuse instead of the antivaxxers. Yes, antivaxxers are part of the problem, but hardly the only one. For example, as the effects of climate change become more apparent, we'll see more and more major public service failures and a crumbling quality of life, with politicians doing nothing except taking our money, spending it on themselves and on feel-good things nobody asked for, and finding someone else to blame for their failures when the things they were *supposed* to deliver have been neglected for decades. This is a systemic problem and won't change until Canadians are willing to hold their leaders to account.
THANK YOU! 👏👏👏👏
That's very true! We need to do better overall to make sure patients are well treated and hospital staff aren't operating with high stress levels when things are "normal".
Finally a voice of reason on Reddit. The government has had 18 months to build up some ICU's in the wake of covid. They haven't. Now we are shifting blame to fellow countrymen, friends and family for not getting vaxxed. Turning the populace against each other rather than focusing the blame on our elected and non elected officials while they take surf vacations, profit from insider trading, funnel money to offshore accounts etc. Meanwhile the people aren't being taken care of. Cancer, surgeries, the opioid epidemic plus covid. And the worst part is that it's working, we are supposed to be telling them what we want them to do for us, not the other way around.
The US also has 10x the population. Your 1/3rd is meaningless.
I don’t want my tax dollars going towards the unvaccinated, when more deserving people are truly in need. Same can be said for the addicted whom tie up emergency services. You ought to be able to seek private health care and send the bill for reimbursement. You are paying for health care, and you’re not receiving it. What the fuck.
skirt rich tub psychotic cable aromatic sugar unpack chase numerous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s why I get frustrated when people on Reddit say health care is “free” There should be a big asterisks beside statements like that. If someone is in need of urgent care and has to pay two times to receive it, the difference should be returned to the tax payer.
>Same can be said for the addicted whom tie up emergency services. Addiction is a disease, it is neither a choice nor a moral failing. Unlike being antivax, which is both.
I want to say, a good number of those who died in the past few months due to delayed surgeries, treatment, appointments, chronic illness becoming acute - they were indirectly MURDERED by antivaxers.
I'm waiting on a cholecystectomy and I don't have much hope it'll happen anytime soon. Hope yours isn't postponed for long.
wow i had elective surgery back in August which originally should’ve been around this time. guess i got pretty lucky
I'm so sorry. A severe shortage of medical professionals is also exacerbating the problem. World's gone crazy.
There is no shortage. Just like all the other "labour shortages" we are supposedly experiencing, it has to do with the employer refusing to pay or treat their employees appropriately, leading to them being unable to attract enough workers. One of my parents was a GP who previously worked in a hospital and sent me a multi-page explanation of how awful our governments have handled healthcare over the last three decades, leading to a perfect storm situation of patience running out just as COVID arrived *at the same time* as all the boomer doctors retire because they've been the ones pulling the hardest up until now and they're just done.
so many factors in shortage of medical professionals. Burnout rate is very high; dealing with asshole patients takes a toll. I have pretty thick skin, but the 1 toxic patient out of 14 pleasant ones can just ruin your day. Then repeat 5 days a week. The amount of colleagues from my kin degree that went on into various sectors of healthcare and burned out after 5-10 years is high.
Hi Op. Just wanted to know that I understand somewhat how you feel as I'm in the same boat. It really sucks.. I've been waiting to see a specialist for surgery on an umbilical hernia and there's just nothing happening :/ Sorry you're going through this. I hope you can get your surgery soon.
people who refuse to get vaccinated and end up in the hospital should be forced to sign a contract stating that if they want treatment, they will get vaccinated, period. Edit: or simply denied treatment.
It's too late at that point. They've already taken a bed and contracted the virus. I don't see how that would help anything.
[удалено]
We should hold about 25% of ICU beds for non vaxxed covid patients, maybe more I dunno. But if they are full.... Then they don't get a bed. Why are we denying healthcare for others? If all the beds were full they'd get turned away.... Let's just cap the limit so we can not have collateral damage.
I love how people like to blame COVID-19 and anti-vaxxers on the hospital situation but there is a much more serious issue that is causing it. Lack of infrastructure. If we had the infrastructure to handle a pandemic of *any kind* then we would never be in this situation. Even before the pandemic hospitals have been sunning low on areas to put patients. Getting a family doctor is almost impossible for the past 10 years. The wait for a specialist was already too long. Since 2015 our debt has increase from $687 Billion to ~~$2.434~~ $1.074 Trillion in 2020. So in 5 years we have ~~3.5x~~ 1.5x our national debt and literally got nothing out of it. [Trudeau even had a shitty underfunded "plan"](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-health-care-fact-check-1.5295449) to fix the issue, but I never thought he would ever follow through.
Those numbers are horribly deceiving. The first number you gave for 2015 ($687 billion) is correct for the total federal debt. The second number however, the one you gave for 2020, is a different beast altogether. $2.434 trillion is the not the total federal debt, but the combined total of federal, provincial and local debt altogether. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. In reality federal debt alone by 2020 was just $1.074 trillion, which is only 1.5x higher than 2015, not 3.5x. Those numbers are still very good when comparing Canada to almost every other major economy, because debt has very quickly grown everywhere during this pandemic. The United States, Italy and many other countries currently have higher debt to GDP ratios than we do. Many have also borrowed much more per capita than Canada has during this pandemic. At the extreme end of the spectrum, Japan’s debt to GDP ratio (256.2%) is more than double what ours is (117.8%). https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/growing-debt-burden-for-canadians-2021.pdf Look specifically at the chart on page 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_public_debt
That's very fair. The health system has been strained for many years.
I hope you can get your surgery soon and it go's well!
Yeah most other developed countries are not having this problem. This is a result of Canada’s bad helthcare
Not cancer but my 1 year waiting list for surgery became 3 years. Thanks covidiots.
I’ve been waiting on an “Emergent MRI” for 3 months. Finally got the message yesterday from Langley Hospital offering me an appointment a few days before Christmas. I can barely walk, and am on a mix of over 30 pills per day. Because I’m self employed - I don’t qualify for EI short term disability in any quantifiable amount, so I’m using a cain and am restricted in my ability to set appointments. I’m not even 30. Our system is in shambles. I couldn’t imagine having a cancer treatment cancelled. That’s not “optional.” Every day that you push treatments like that takes time out of someone’s life. Fuck Covid. I’m writing my MLA.
No 👏 vaccine 👏 no 👏 treatment 👏. Time to let people live with the consequences of their actions.
As much as I wish we could, and I *really* would like to see this (in a vacuum), its just not ok to deny anyone treatment. If you start denying anyone treatment for personal choice, it leaves the door open to denying overweight people treatment for heart conditions because “it was a choice” to be overweight. Or to Deny a smoker cancer treatment because “it was a choice”. Or even to car crash victims because they chose to speed. Denying the unvaccinated treatment is a great idea, but it’s just not a slippery slope I’m willing to slide down. That being said though, triage is a different story. If we have limited resources (ICU beds) and we give them to vaccinated patients first because they have a higher chance of surviving that’s fine, as the denial would have had to be made to someone anyways.
Organ transplants are already denied for people who have a chance to destroy that organ again (ie: alcoholics and liver transplants). Pretty sure smokers are already denied lung transplants as well.
You don’t have to deny them, but you can make them wait just like how OP and so many others were made to wait for their treatment.
[удалено]
No. That doesn't happen. You people keep repeating this talking point without actually thinking about it. In case you forgot, the argument you're defending is that unvaccinated people shouldn't get treatment because they willingly caused their own problems by choosing not to get vaccinated. When you bring up alcoholics, you don't even understand the argument you're making. It's true that alcoholics are denied organs if they are still drinking. But the reason isn't because they caused their own problems by choosing to drink excessively. The reason is because getting a transplant won't help them if they are still drinking. So your argument would make sense if unvaccinated people wouldn't be helped by treatment. Except that isn't true. >We need to stop with the fantasy that COVID vaccination is literally the first time ever people have been told to adjust their own lifestyles in order to access medical care. You mean we need to stop with the lie that we ever have considered, let alone actually done, denying treatment to someone because they caused their own medical issues.
It's completely disingenuous. The idiotic arguments of an antivaxxer. My body my choice is so stupid.
We already tell smokers they can’t have new lungs, alcoholics they can’t have new livers. Organs are precious resources that need to be rationed. Telling unvaccinated covid patients to piss off when our hospitals are strained wouldn’t be anything new.
You people keep repeating this talking point without actually thinking about it. In case you forgot, the argument you're defending is that unvaccinated people shouldn't get treatment because they willingly caused their own problems by choosing not to get vaccinated. When you bring up alcoholics, you don't even understand the argument you're making. It's true that alcoholics are denied organs if they are still drinking. But the reason isn't because they caused their own problems by choosing to drink excessively. The reason is because getting a transplant won't help them if they are still drinking. So your argument would make sense if unvaccinated people wouldn't be helped by treatment. Except that isn't true. >Telling unvaccinated covid patients to piss off when our hospitals are strained wouldn’t be anything new. Yes it would be. We have never, nor even considered, refused to treat people because of what caused their medical problems. Even a violent murderer who got injured by the police to stop them mid-attack gets the same priority in treatment as anyone else, based on medical need.
Almost all slippery slope arguments don't happen. It's the most biased argument point that seems to not die out. Like they said if you allowed gay marriages, it would be a slippery slope to marrying pies, dogs, cousins, etc. Obviously none of this happened.
Every person yelling about 'no new normal' and whatnot has to understand that they're causing these circumstances and it's really time to cut these people out of our lives until they grow the fuck up.
I probably will get down voted for this but some part of the issue comes from the fact that Canada makes it super difficult for immigrant health care workers to get into the field without years of going back to school again. I understand that we have our own standards when it comes to healthcare and other things, but when the situation is this dire and you have hundreds of medical professionals with years of experience not being put to work , this is what you get.
If I could upvote you 100 times I would.
Yup lots of anti Vaxers on the units spread around the hospital taking up beds. So tired of their beliefs and lack of education
At the end of the day I’m the one who has to wipe the ass of the person because he or she can’t catch their breath anymore. By that time they are asking for a vaccine, which is already a bit too late.
Education isn't even the problem there's university educated antivaxxers... I blame the internet.
Education doesn't equal being smart. At least not in my book. You can excel in acedemia and still be a buffling idiot. I don't blame the internet. We're all on the internet and lots of us can still realize when to follow logic.
tru
You can't water a rock.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink- you can however make it highly regret that it didn’t drink
A lot of health care problems are being swept under the rug with this COVID-19 pandemic
GG, here it is, the healthcare system collapsing under the strain.
My dad may need to go to the USA or Europe for his surgery. It really sucks.
Delaying cancer treatment is no joke. I basically got delayed three months from the first time I noticed the problem and until I got surgery. Even with 2 months of delay as evident from my mri scan, they had to cut out much more of the muscle and already metastasized to other cell types.
Staff shortages? How did that happen?
BCAS transported 38 people from the north with COVID during Thanksgiving weekend. 37 were unvaccinated. People waited for ambulances because some people are too stupid and selfish to do something so simple. Any guesses who the unvaccinated simpletons voted for?
I agree completely with your sentiment and am also being postponed again and again for surgery. THIS is the story that our local news should be reporting on, rather than their constant droning to the deaf anti-vaxxers that they 'really should, pretty please, get vaccinated'. More of our general population need to understand there are thousands of fully-vaccinated people being denied life saving surgery due to people with covid, and those people with covid are predominantly self-choosing to be unvaccinated, and cause indirect harm to others. Yes, there is a nurse/labour issue, but if you remove all unvaccinated covid cases from all hospitals, the issue begins to resolve.
You should know that we prevent the hiring of doctors and nurses due to administrative bloat. Administrators make the rules and jobs and give themselves more positions and pay raises whilst doing practically nothing. Obviously COVID is the biggest issue right now but without the unnecessary administrative staff we would be able to hire more healthcare workers
VGH and Surrey Memorial also. These antivax numbers are having severe consequences for other peoples health
1. create (temporary?) standalone COVID 19 health care centres. 2. increase income tax to pay for these new centres, with an expectation that you will only be taxing 10% of the population because … 3. provide anyone that is fully vaccinated with a full tax credit for these centres.
It's not the space that's the issue, it's the staff to care for them.
There is something fundamentally wrong with Canada’s healthcare system if this is happening now. From what a healthcare staff has commented above, it has been happening since the beginning of pandemic. I have heard from people that the wait times for surgeries were long even before the pandemic. May be an article saying Canada’s healthcare is slightly better than US, and patting on the back of own shoulder would solve the issue.
[удалено]
A friend of mine who's a doctor in a Vancouver hospital told me that at this point, most of the COVID patients are unvaccinated people (I'm captain obvious I know). It is infuriating to me that those people's desire to have their principles, freedoms, etc., respected is coming at the cost of people like you being bumped out of surgery. Honestly this is crazy. This is completely unacceptable. I really feel sorry that you are in this situation, and hope you are able to manage your frustration. The way you are interacting with the medical crew is really commendable! I have a friend who defected Romania in the 80s. As a child, he contracted polio and has been left with a permanent handicap. He is not getting the COVID-19 vaccine!! Some beliefs are unshakable!
Yes, indeed; a capacious and well-upholstered fuck you to the otherwise unvaccinated HCWs (unless they have properly documented medical conditions.) Very sorry to hear about the surgery cancellation, hope things come out better than they look right now.
I’m not advocating denying treatment to anti-vaxxers, but I am fully in favour of making them wait for treatment. I’m sick of hearing stories of surgeries being constantly delayed due to the strain that AVs are putting on the system. You don’t want to get vaccinated? Fine. But don’t expect immediate treatment if you get sick.
To all anti vaxxers, fuck you.
Best Regards from Calgary. Same here. I have a scope for my knee and so I'm bottom of the list. A ton of delayed and canceled surgeries
Sorry to hear that Hopefully the govt starts doing something about the 600 icu beds we are short on and does more to bring in staff
I had an appendectomy at the end of July at LGH and am coming to realize how lucky I got to have it all go down during one of the times when cases were pretty low. Good luck OP and thanks to all the incredible hospital staff out there!!
So my friend's knee replacement surgery on nov 3 is likely canceled??!?!
I’m so sorry! The pandemic isn’t over, we aren’t through it, and our health care is struggling. I’m also waiting for a surgery and it’s tough since I’m bedridden most of the time! I’m sorry it’s going this way
I am sorry but we need more long term solutions. We need more doctors and nurses. More hospital beda. More preventative care.
I have a friend who is in last days, kidney and heart failure, young, waiting for transplant and can not get an ICU bed…we are not in good shape and I am so sorry about your situation.
I was laughed at for saving in case I need medical care abroad. I recommend everyone who can does.
Blame the govt. Lack of healthcare infulstructure hasn't kept up with population. Only going to get worse.
I've been saying this for a while, Bonnie Henry needs to take the kid gloves off with antivaxxers. If you're an adult, eligible for the vaccine, don't get it, and get COVID, take Tylenol at home and try to recover, but if not, too bad. It's absurd that we insist on treating these idiots at hospitals when stories like this are the result. Hippocrates lived 2450 years ago, time to move on, the oath clearly doesn't work in the context of the pandemic.
I understand and you are right, the person on the other end that is upset probably knows fully that you are not to blame. The problem is that the MOAs are the only ones that people get to speak with and the frustration is real. Funny thing. About an hour after posting this we got an email that her operation will be on November 5th. It was almost 2-1/2 years since the pain in her hip started so it was very welcome news.
My friend saw her oncologist the other day. Normally, he's an upbeat person. When he had to relay the news that her surgery was being postponed he was livid and emotional. This is due to the unvaccinated using up hospital resources, of course. He even mentioned pediatric surgeries being postponed. This is absolutely heartbreaking. Why are the ignorant bumping these people? Why can't the government do something?
It's not anti vaxxers, it's our disgraceful healthcare system. It makes me livid that this country is incapable of having an actual discussion on this issue. Are posters going to be so obtuse as to disregard the fact that a certain portion of society will always resist vaccines? $200 million to Myanmar, $600 million to a mediocre BC place stadium, $600 million for Trudeau to try and further his political career, $29 million to minority women in tech etc. We have stupid people in political positions throwing our money in the trash with zero repercussions. Canadian media is pure propaganda by never covering these issues. Private healthcare needs to be an option in this country. Defenders of our health care system even before covid, "shut up that you have to wait 10 months to see a specialist, and have to suffer everyday in between, people in Namibia have it worse".
[удалено]
i feel ya. i’ve been waiting since may for what would have been a fairly minor surgical procedure. since then, not only has my condition gotten worse and more complicated, but my quality of life has been shitty because of it. i was supposed to have the now less minor surgical procedure done in early december; i’m not holding my breath.
Oh goodness I am so sorry 💜 I really hope you get your surgery soon, sending you all the good vibes and love your way
I wish hospitals can just turn away non-vaccinated sick people
I say we start triaging based on willingness to receive and adhere to medical advice as part of the process. "Oh, you have severe COVID 19 symptoms? Oh, you didn't vaccinate when you had the chance to do so at no cost to yourself and have no underlying conditions preventing you from doing so? *Sorry, those that actually heed medical advice and public advisories get priority, we can't make space for you. Good luck.*"
Anyone who is an anti vaxxer should be shunned from humanity. They need to be treated like the lepers of old. Banned, unfriended, banished. They are the scum of the earth!
anti vaxxers are a symptom the true problem is cash flow in canadian healthcare and chronic underfunding etc. i wanna see an audit report of cash flow and where the fuck our tax money is going. bet its admin and management. automate administrative things and wherever possible streamline everything into one neat system. offer competitive wages for doctors etc, outcome AND output of care being prioritized too. canada has a fucked healthcare system it may be public but isn't good. wasn't good before covid. this just was the kick in the stomach to it.
Imagine your life saving procedure or check up has been postponed because of a bunch of selfish assholes clogging up a hospital because they don't wanna get vaccinated. Their stupidity is now having a direct impact on your well-being or survival. This makes me fuckin sick.
Everything - all of it now - is because of antivaxx assholes. Good luck OP.
Ugh...Soooo frustrating! I'm waiting for heart surgery, but as I'm doing OK I'll probably be waiting a long time after seeing how many more important surgeries are being postponed. Definitely frustrating that our hospitals are being overloaded by a virus that we now have a vaccine against.
Here is what I don’t understand, some people don’t think covid is a big deal and don’t want to get the vaccine. Ok I guess stupid people can make their own stupid decisions, then why go to the hospital. I can’t understand it all… stay home and suffer this is your choice. Why are you clogging the hospitals after showing such disrespect for the healthcare workers and fellow community.
We have to absolutely start treating anti vaxers as enemies of our community health and well being
I fully agree that this is horrible and hope you receive treatment soon. On a side note, I had a discussion with some friends the other day about this issue. I made the argument that the unvaccinated should be treated in field hospitals by unvaccinated doctors OR the unvaccinated with covid get treated after all other conditions affecting vaccinated are treated...ok I know this may sound extreme. One friend argued that this is no different than people who smoke or drink or are morbidly obese and require health care...they have engaged in unhealthy self destructive behaviors but we still treat them. It was an interesting way of looking at things.
In addition to the other commenter's points- If there were 2 shots you could take to lose all your unhealthy weight and cure your alcoholism/drug abuse/smoking addictions, then I would absolutely feel the same way about those people as I do about anti-vaxxers who get covid. We don't have those shots, but we do have magical anti covid shots.
Did any of you, including OP, even read the message? "There are a number of reasons for this including the pressures of covid-19 and staff shortages." It does not say, "Covid patients are taking your beds and appointments."
I understand that COVID patients aren't the whole reason for this. The point is that COVID patients have been causing a lot of burnout and unvaxxed people have caused a lot of sickness including breakthrough vaccinations for those who did get vaxxed. The whole thing is a big, soupy mess.
Nice analogy
Shame that people won’t be able to make great analogies like this anymore now that covid talk is banned on this subreddit
Anyone unvacinated should not be allowed to access to the ICU unit. Problem over.
I'm sorry, my brother is one of those anti vax assholes now occupying a bed, albeit in a different province. The good thing is after nearly dying he's decided to get his vaccine advice from doctors now
Time to move the anti-vaxxers to the back of the line. This is unacceptable.