As patients arrive, vets feel the effect

Re: “Long-term care patients joining Ste-Anne Hospital civilian wards” (West Island, Sept. 28) The migration of the civilian patient/refugees from the crumbling confines of the Grace Dart Extended Care facility to the safer shores of Ste. Anne’s Hospital is a positive move for the newcomers, but will inevitably bring a slide in care for the remaining few hundred veterans.

It is all very well for Patrick Murphy-Lavallée of the CIUSSS West Island health authority to trot out his heartening story of a few fortunate veterans who were able to reunite with their spouses under the same roof, but to utilize that small sliver of satisfaction to justify his broad-brush description of this truly traumatic turn of events as a “win-win situation” for both civilians and veterans, is inaccurate and insensitive. The foretaste of what is about to descend further upon the veterans at Ste. Anne’s, with the influx of three (more) floors of civilian patients, has become evident since the transfer of jurisdiction on April 1, and more acutely so after the infusion a few months ago of the first civilian patients from Vaudreuil-Soulanges and Valleyfield.

That’s when we felt the effects of staff shortages, poorer patient-care protocols, newly hired and markedly inexperienced, inattentive and illtrained employees. The frail and failing body of veterans is increasingly relegated to the shadows. When Lavallée spoke of how the hospital’s veteran population will diminish with time, freeing up their private rooms for civilians, it almost appeared he cares more about the veterans’ actuarial status than he does for their care. Lieut.(Ret’d) Wolf William Solkin, Ste-Anne Hospital, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue