A 48-minute wait at Etobicoke General Hospital’s ER to see a doctor may be absurdly long for most. But almost breakneck compared to Ontario’s provincial average of 2.1 hours. 

Etobicoke General Hospital is Humber North Campus’s neighbour to the east, where students requiring immediate medical care will likely find themselves in the hospital’s ER. Many students may find their trip to the ER lasting up to 24 hours, according to Health Quality Ontario. 

Nearby hospitals aren’t faring any better. Brampton Civic, Etobicoke General’s sister hospital, has an average wait time of 1.4 hours to see a physician. 

Twenty-one-year-old Cedric Badere, a Brampton resident visited Etobicoke General in October 2022. They were seeking treatment for a fractured wrist and wanted to avoid the longer wait at Brampton Civic’s ER. 

“It was a standard wait time, what I expect from the ER, “ They said. “Definitely less than Brampton Civic.” 

Speaking of Brampton Civic Hospital, it has an infamous reputation among Brampton citizens for its excruciatingly long wait times, allegedly hostile staff, and dizzying disorganization

Sabrina Puliz, a 20-year-old Brampton resident, states that it took two hours for a physician to examine her severely ill father. On the other hand, it only took 20 to 30 minutes for her to be seen at Etobicoke General. 

Location and demographics can play a huge role in determining patient flow. Despite Toronto’s massive population, it has multiple hospitals to spread out and stagger demand. 

“It depends on how wide a catchment area the hospital serves,” stated Dr Bernard Ho, an emergency physician at Mount Sinai Hospital. 

“The community hospitals for example, so those out in Mississauga or Brampton, Markham because there  aren’t as many hospitals around they have a wider catchment area so they see more patients in a day.”

Brampton’s population has been increasing exponentially from roughly sixty-two thousand people in 2016 to over six hundred thousand in 2021. The city has a growth rate of 10.6 per cent, double the national and provincial average. 

Puliz visited Brampton Civic in 2015, and she noticed a significant difference between then and now. “They gave me a tour of the hospital, the rooms I’d be going in and out of as a patient…just so I was comfortable and familiar.”

“I don’t think that do that anymore, I don’t think they know where the rooms are.”

Now more on demographics, Toronto has long been anticipating its aging population’s strain on the healthcare system. A 2021 census report states: “Since 2016, there are more people age 65 or older in Toronto than there are people under the age of 15.” 

“The issue with the backlog is more so an issue with capacity and bed blockage,” Dr. Ho explains. “ I came on to a shift and half the beds in emerg will be patients that are admitted waiting for a bed upstairs or in the ICU.” 

“Part of the issue is that there aren’t enough long-term care beds.” 

Many patients occupying beds in hospitals in the GTA are elderly and while fit to be discharged, are waiting for available beds in long-term care homes.

“They just sit in the hospital, waiting for that bed,” He says. “It’s a bit of bottleneck, of patients waiting to be discharged before we can move patients up from the emerg.” 

“Our home care or long-term care infrastructure isn’t able to deal with the influx of these patients.”

Staffing poses another significant issue. A 2023 health audit explains that Canadian hospitals have been struggling to retain their ER nurses. The William Osler Health System (the organization managing both Brampton Civic and Etobicoke General) has a full-time nursing vacancy rate of 26 per cent for this year.

High nurse turnover rates have a lasting impact on the quality of healthcare patients are receiving. Catherine Ferguson, a professor at Humber College and ER nurse at North York General Hospital, talks about the consequences of inexperience. 

“If you have a good skill mix, then you have people to go to,” Ferguson says. “When I started…all the other nurses I was working with were very seasoned. They would help you, you could ask questions.” 

“Now if you have a lot of new nurses, who don’t have the experience. You have new nurses training new nurses training new nurses. And they haven’t got enough experience yet, so when you don’t have people that know more to go to, things get lost.”

Puliz describes some of the nurses she observed at Brampton Civic as being new and inexperienced. One was fresh out of medical school and was paired with a senior staff member.

“She would go check on patients and forget her stethoscope,” Puliz says. 

Again many of these issues were forecasted. Demographics have shown in the past that the current working population will soon age into long-term care. Nursing shortages have been an issue long before the pandemic

Long ER wait times are not just a local problem, it’s making headlines across Canada. Nonetheless, long wait times are not an anomaly but rather simply symptoms of larger systemic issues. 

COVID-19 may be easy to blame, but it simply split open cracks in the healthcare system that have been forming for years. 

When asked why seemingly little was done to fortify the healthcare system in preparation, Dr. Ho states: “Prior to COVID, this was a slow burn issue. It was slowly creeping, people were talking about it.”

“COVID accelerated the issue and really cracked it open, there’s much more of a spotlight on it now and hopefully that will mean it gets prioritized.”