Parents left scrambling as staff shortages close birth units – CBC
‘I’m just afraid. Afraid that health care will fail me again, fail [my son],’ Ottawa woman says
Dec 05, 2022
It’s after midnight and an overdue Kendra Duval sits on the edge of her bathtub after two days in early labour, her waters finally broken and intense contractions underway.
She prepared for a hospital birth, but there isn’t one for her to go to. 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 already be headed to Winchester, but its birth unit has been closed overnight due to staffing shortages.
Duval knows the baby is coming. She can’t stop her body’s contractions or slow them down. “It was definitely the scariest moment of my entire life,” she said.
After the scramble that happened next, the couple wants people to know that health care in the province urgently needs fixing, and that staffing problems extend beyond some hospital emergency rooms.
