It’s after midnight and a belated Kendra Duval sits on the edge of her bathtub after two days of early labor, her waters finally broken and intense contractions underway.
She prepared for a hospital birth, but there is nowhere to go. Her husband is on the phone with a nurse at a hospital in the small town of Winchester in North Dundas, Ont., trying to figure out where to drive.
They should be heading to Winchester by now, but their birth unit has been closed overnight due to staff shortages.
Duval knows the baby is coming. He cannot stop his body’s contractions or slow them down. “It was definitely the scariest moment of my entire life,” she said.
After the fight that followed, the couple want people to know that health care in the province is in urgent need of a fix and that staffing issues extend beyond some hospital emergency rooms.
“I should be here relaxing and recovering from the birth and just enjoying my baby. But I’m so angry that this happened to me, and I’m so upset that this could happen to someone else, that I feel like I have to say. something about it,” he said.
A short umbilical cord that couldn’t be moved by hand got wrapped around Kayce Duval’s neck when she was born, and it had to be cut. His parents wonder what would have happened if they had been driving at the time. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
Until a week before her Nov. 20 due date, Duval had no idea her hospital’s obstetrics unit might go out of business.
She found out by chance, at a routine checkup with her obstetrician and gynecologist (gynecologist).
Duval, her husband and four-year-old daughter live in the small eastern Ontario community of Russell, Ont., a half-hour drive southeast of downtown Ottawa. The couple chose to have their second child at Winchester District Memorial Hospital, also half an hour’s drive away, because of its strong reputation in obstetrics.
The staff at her gynecologist’s office said they were running late; the doctor had to help women who needed induction who couldn’t go to the hospital that night because the labor unit wasn’t staffed enough to stay open.
Now I feel like everything is in jeopardy again because we might not have help right now, whenever the time comes.- Kendra Duval
Duval, “blindsided” by what she heard, asked what would happen to her in that situation. She was told that the hospitals regularly communicate with each other, another hospital would take her if necessary and not to worry.
But she worried. She had recently suffered a miscarriage and was being closely monitored as a result. And this time, COVID-19 and other viruses made her sick on several occasions.
“I said to my husband, I’ve spent nine, 10 months doing everything I can to protect this baby and make sure he’s safe. And now I feel like everything is in jeopardy again because we might not have help right now. moment, whenever the moment comes.”
Winchester District Memorial Hospital said closing its birthing unit “is the safest option” for both patients and staff when insufficient staff are available. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
When the time came, on the night of 22 November, after two days of early labour, the Winchester Labor Unit was to close from 11pm to 7am due to staff shortages.
“These short-term closures usually happen a few times a year, but with staffing challenges affecting all of health care, it happened more often earlier this year and over the summer,” said the hospital spokeswoman Jane Adams told CBC News in an email.
“In November, the unit was closed six times, for between eight and twelve hours, each time for staffing.”
Across the province this year, 25 hospitals have temporarily closed their birthing units at least once since July 6 (when Ontario Health began tracking the problem) due to staff shortages.
Ontario Health will not provide a list of which hospitals closed maternity units.
Another hospital could take them, but then it couldn’t
Duval was near the threshold for admission when he arrived at the Winchester hospital before the delivery unit closed. The nurse who had been checking her progress for the past two days told her to come back in the morning to break her water if it didn’t happen on its own.
“I broke down in tears. I said, ‘I’m so afraid that he’s going to come, that something’s going to happen at night and you’re going to be locked up,'” Duval recalled.
So the nurse arranged paperwork for Duval to go to Ottawa’s Montfort Hospital if the labor progressed, Duval said.
About 45 minutes after arriving home, her water broke. Her husband called Montfort to say they were on their way, but Montfort said he was out of room and to call the Ottawa Hospital General Campus.
Ottawa’s Montfort Hospital said it is experiencing nursing shortages like other hospitals in Ontario, and maternity units closing at nearby hospitals “are affecting us too.” (Jonathan Dupaul/Radio-Canada)
Duval’s partner called the Winchester nurse. The General also didn’t have a place, he reported, but Ottawa’s Queensway Carleton Hospital did.
It was an hour away.
“She could hear me screaming in the background, and so she ended up telling my husband, come back to Winchester, I’ll reevaluate you. And if necessary, maybe we can get an ambulance to take you,” Duval said.
They came to the emergency room to re-enroll. It was too late to go anywhere else.
“I was completely panicked. I was erratic… Everything was happening so fast. I kept telling them… I can’t do this, I’m going to die, I just didn’t feel safe,” Duval recalled.
The nurse coached her, with another loan nurse and an ER doctor, until a gynecologist showed up 40 minutes later just in time to deliver the baby.
I don’t think anyone deserves to be put in this situation; not me as a mother, but not as someone who is just trying to do her job.- Kendra Duval
She had a short umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, too short to move with her hand. It had to be cut while labor was still going on, and then the staff worked on it for 15 minutes to make sure it was okay.
Duval said the staff was “awesome” — she and her husband aren’t upset with the hospital at all — but that the situation was unfair to all of them.
“[The nurse] He sent me home as safely as he could at this point, only to find me there again…completely erratic, at work, with no time to escape. I don’t think anyone deserves to be put in this situation; not me as a mother, but not as someone just trying to do her job,” she said.
“They’ve gone above and beyond for us, but we feel the system has failed us overall, and it’s failed them,” added Ken Duval.
Six-day-old Kayce Duval is held by his mother at their home in Russell, Ont., on November 29. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
“We deserve better than this”
Last week, Ontario’s five largest health care unions announced that staff turnover is running at about 15 per cent and that hospitals need to hire 47,000 people to address the problem and meet the needs of a population bigger and growing.
They also admonished the province for trying to cap wage increases at one per cent.
The province announced Thursday that a record number of nurses (nearly 14,000) had registered in Ontario by 2022 and that it was investing $14 million to register more.
Duval said healthcare workers deserve more money and appreciation to attract workers.
“Without these people, where are we? They deserve more respect than this, and as normal people just trying to raise a family, we deserve better than this too. Something has to change and it has to change now,” he said.
“I’m just scared. Scared that health care will fail me again, fail me [my son].”
LOOK | The Duval experience in Eastern Ontario:
New parents say the health care system failed them
Kendra and Ken Duval said hospital staff “did the best they could with what they had” to help the couple deliver their son after a maternity hospital closure changed their birth plan .
Closing the unit “the safest option,” the hospital says
In a statement, the Ontario Ministry of Health said it expects hospitals to “ensure that all impacts are considered as they work to provide the most appropriate range and quality of health care services and programs for patients and residents, within available resources.”
Families are encouraged to talk with their health care providers “and work together to develop an approach that ensures patients get the right care when needed.”
None of the hospitals involved would comment directly on Duval’s situation, citing patient confidentiality.
Winchester Hospital said it “does everything possible” to find another hospital for patients when it closes the maternity unit, and closing “is the safest option” when there are not enough staff available. He hopes his “almost full” roster will reduce closings.
Montfort Hospital said it can usually accommodate all patients at its birth center, but when there are already many people admitted, “we may not be able to provide the level of care that everyone needs.”
“Like other hospitals in the province, Montfort is suffering from a nursing shortage. The closures of maternity hospitals in neighboring hospitals also affect us,” the statement said.
A nurse walks to a patient in an emergency department in Toronto in January. Ontario’s five largest health care unions say hospitals need to hire 47,000 people to deal with staff turnover and meet the needs of an older and growing population. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)