Advocating for Better Patient Care in Canada

"Advocating for better patient care, health system reform, and physician rights is a core physician competency and professional responsibility."

"[The organization] unequivocally condemns all forms of workplace harassment, bullying and intimidation of emergency physicians by organizational and system-level administrators, colleagues, medical leadership, health system officials and politicians."

"[Harassment creates] toxic work environments [while undermining patient safety and contributing to physician burnout]."

Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians

 

"It was the perfect storm of overcrowding in the hospital and the emergency department, staff shortages, too many sick patients and too few available ER [emergency room] beds."

"We talk about cracks in the system. But this is when the roof has fallen in. It truly has failed when we can't treat the sickest patients in our emergency department in a timely manner."

Kaitlin Stockton, British Columbia emergency physician

 

"The bullying and harassment, unfortunately, is done by all levels -- by managers, by anybody in admin; it's been done by very senior physicians who hold administrative positions, as well as administrators who hold positions of power."

"Basically, they set up the conditions for constructive dismissal using everything they can. It's the slow bleed out of a care provider. They make it impossible to work. And we've seen that: You ask any physician who's been around for a while. We've seen that."

"The  ORs [operating rooms] can shut down at four o'clock, five o'clock, unless there's an emergency. The [wards upstairs] can say, 'No, we're full', because they have safety concerns, and rightly so."

"The emergency, we never close our doors."

Dr. Trevor Jain, emergency physician, Prince Edward Island 

Across Canada, emergency rooms are routinely operating beyond 100 per cent capacity. Photo by John Mahoney/Postmedia

 

Emergency doctors in Canada have struck a position, demanding protection against harassment and bullying by administration when they speak out about their experiences as responsible physicians struggling with an increasingly impossible situation in trying to treat people who show up at hospital emergency rooms hoping for medical attention, but finding hugely extended wait times because there are too few doctors available, nurses run off their feet, and an increasing population making more demands than ever on the country's universal health care system.

 

Physicians (and nursing staff) witnessing people in agony of pain, uncertainty and fear and feeling themselves unable to respond adequately as they are meant to do, under the weight of their belief in the Hippocratic Oath, do their utmost and frustratingly find it is never enough to stem the rising tide of  health service inadequacy in Canada. When doctors facing situations of pending death should attention not immediately be shifted to those suffering and waiting, raise their voices about unreported deaths resulting from dangerous ER overcrowding, they become themselves victimized by hospital administrators who want to hush up any pending controversy. 

 

"The plethora and huge amount of harassment and bullying emergency physicians are experiencing across the country for shedding light on dangerous overcrowding conditions, lack of [patient] flow and a pandemic of  unreported deaths in our waiting rooms" has led the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians to launch a demand for "effective and enforced" whistleblower protection for physicians who risk personal and professional persecution when they are driven by compassion and caring for the patients under medical duress whose lives are put at risk by such medical inadequacies.  

 

A new report finds that deaths while waiting for medical procedures is up 64 per cent over the last five years in Canada. Photo by Getty Images

 

The Fraser Health Authority, as an example, was sued by B.C. emergency doctor Kaitlin Stockton after she was essentially fired following the posting of a sign in a Port Moody, B.C. ER in 2024, to alert patients of unacceptable the pending wait times they faced. Although Dr. Stockton was one among a handful of colleagues who posted the warning, she was singled out, bullied and threatened once the story of the sign became fodder for area news outlets. Dr. Stockton stated she was threatened and harassed for speaking out and for asking the hospital to transfer admitted patients to various areas of the hospital and call "Code orange" to respond to incoming patients. 

 

Dr. Paul Parks, an Alberta  emergency physician, reported a "near-miss" with  a patient having chest pain, examined while standing in a hallway, no empty stretchers available. The patient was found to have a life-threatening blood clot. In another instance, a woman in her 50s in a "confused/altered" state, unable to walk, arrived at an Alberta ER. "She was flagged for MD assessment still confused after 4 hours waiting in a wheelchair. It became clear something was terribly wrong when she was in a proper treatment space; a CT scan showed a  bad bleed in her brain, requiring emergency intubation and transfer for neurosurgery. She could have easily died waiting for care", stated Dr. Parks.  

 

"There is still a tonne of fear around physicians being retaliated against, losing their job, losing their licence. You lose your licence, you're done. Your career is over."

"But if people can't rely on health-care providers to be their voices, especially those who can't advocate for themselves, who is going to advocate for them?"

"[Whistleblower legislation isn't enough]; It needs to be visible, and it needs to be enforced."

Dr. Kaitlin Stockton 

 

"So, when you walk into the waiting room and there's people lying on the floor, people leaning against the walls, people in distress, people who don't have a family doctor, people with post-op complications, 84-year-olds waiting 12 hours -- that should be a huge red flag that multiple canaries have died and the system is in distress."
"You can't access primary care? 'Go to emerg'. Postop problems from the operation yesterday? Go to emerg. 'I can't look after my loved one anymore'? Go to emerg. A nursing home says, 'This patient has become too difficult for us to manage'? Go to emerg."

"We've become the 'easy button' for the Canadian healthcare system."

Dr. Trevor Jain  

Patients left in the hallway due to an at capacity emergency room at the Humber River Hospital in Toronto. Photo by Nathan Denette /The Canadian Press