After nurse’s outcry, changes coming to struggling N.B. hospital

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A nurse’s recent letter to Premier Susan Holt about deplorable conditions in Fredericton’s hospital isn’t connected to Horizon Health Network’s decision to temporarily close and renovate the converted ambulance bay that’s been used to house patients despite having no bathrooms, little privacy, and constant noise, says president and CEO Margaret Melanson.

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On Jan. 8, Brunswick News reported on an open letter sent by Katarina Lekborg, a 31-year-old registered nurse with eight years on the job, about the conditions her 88-year-old grandmother, Theresa, was forced to endure at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital (DECH). 

“Premier Holt, I need to be honest: this is not a unit. It is legitimately the garage with curtains,” Lekborg wrote.

“There is no bathroom. No running water. No sink to wash hands. She eats inches from the commode she must use to relieve herself. There is no privacy, a tattered curtain with holes. No doors. The lights are relentless, on all day and all night. There are no windows, no way to tell the time of day. Paper thin ‘walls’; the noise never stops.”

On Monday, Horizon and Melanson announced that the Medical Transition Unit (MTU) will soon temporarily close, and move to a different part of the hospital. But the plan is to keep using the converted ambulance bay to “provide additional clinical care” – albeit after bathrooms and sinks have been installed, and other improvements have been made.

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When Brunswick News asked Melanson whether Lekborg’s letter sparked the changes to the MTU, she pushed back.

“I would reassure you that these relocations were already in the planning stages as part of our ongoing efforts toward how to move any non-acute services into the community,” Melanson said. “We certainly do not arrive upon these community locations overnight, so I can certainly verify for you this planning was well underway prior to the communication that was undertaken several days ago.”

Brunswick News then asked Melanson whether New Brunswickers should consider the timing of the nurse’s letter and the changes as nothing more than a big coincidence.

After again pushing back and denying the events are connected, Melanson said that Horizon knew that “when this unit was opened in 2024, that this was far less than ideal space.”

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But until Lekborg’s story went public, there was no indication Horizon intended to change anything.

When he was asked about Lekborg’s letter, Health Minister John Dornan described the MTU’s woes as “a very significant symptom of a broken system.”

“When we have senior people in our ERs without adequate bedding, privacy, noise protection, washroom facilities, that is not what I want to be proud of, and so I work daily to try to fix that, to alleviate the pressures on our emergency department, so that we can give more timely, respectful care to people that are in our ERs and in our hospitals,” said Dornan, the former president and CEO of Horizon.

Holt made similar comments.

In addition to the MTU, Horizon is also planning a series of other moves to alleviate overcrowding pressure at the DECH, including moving some electrodiagnostic and respiratory therapy to “a community location,” adding more blood services in the city, and moving some clinical services to different wings.

The MTU, Melanson said, will move to the space currently occupied by the electrodiagnostic and respiratory therapy services that are being moved out. That will happen by the end of March, she said.

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