Patients in rooms without AC At Verdun General
After spending the weekend at the Verdun General Hospital with her brother, Point- St-Charles resident Wylma Cobb had some advice for others who might have to make a similar trip during this week’s heat wave: “Bring your own fan.”
In the midst of a record-breaking heat wave, patients on the upper floors of the Verdun General Hospital do not have access to air conditioning in their rooms or the halls just outside.
The emergency room is wonderful, Cobb said, but patients who have been moved to beds on upper floors can be found sitting in the hallways in front of industrial fans or with damp cloths on their foreheads and necks. Buckets of melting ice sit outside patient rooms.
“It’s like hell up there,” Cobb said. “To me, it’s just totally inhumane.”
Her brother, Derek, 66, was brought to the hospital by ambulance after developing an infection at his residence on Saturday. He has difficulty communicating, and Cobb said that is probably why he was brought to the Verdun General instead of the Glen, where his medical records are.
“Sometimes you don’t end up in the right place, and that shouldn’t be,” Cobb said. “You should be able to go to any hospital and be served (under the same conditions).”
Taking the advice of a nurse, Cobb purchased a fan for her brother’s room. Others on the upper floors have done the same, evidenced by the tags that have yet to be removed, she pointed out. Cobb said that when Derek is released, she plans on leaving his fan for other patients who do not have the means to get one of their own.
After reading a Montreal Gazette article about individuals who were sent to local emergency rooms because they were suffering from heat stroke, Wylma said she needed to vent her frustrations.
“I just think it’s appalling,” she said. “Nobody comes (to the hospital) for a vacation.”
A spokesperson for Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux (CIUSSS), the government group that operates the hospital, confirmed there is no air conditioning in patient rooms in some of their centres. She continued that there are climatecontrolled public spaces within the centres for patients and their visitors, though she was unable to specify where they could be found at the Verdun General Hospital.
After walking around, Cobb, who lives with a respiratory illness, said the only place that felt cooler to her was on the hospital’s first floor. That area, however, is not easily reachable for Derek, who is quadriplegic and effectively confined to his bed without additional assistance.
“It’s not enough. My brother can’t get out of bed,” she said, adding that there are probably others like him who aren’t mobile enough to reach these spaces.
“Sick people should be treated better,” Cobb said as she dampened another cloth for Derek’s neck.
Improvements are set to be made to the Verdun General Hospital. In 2014, a project to modernize and expand the hospital was included in the Quebec government’s 20142024 infrastructure plan. In it, the government pledged almost $17 billion over 10 years to improve about a dozen health-care facilities across the province.
In the project’s description of the current state of the hospital, noise and heat are listed as causes of patient discomfort in the care and intensive care units. Improving therapeutic conditions is also one of the project’s goals. As of the beginning of July, the project’s web page shows that it is still in the planning phase.