Montreal nurses who have volunteered to work in a private long-term care home with a major COVID-19 outbreak said there is “shockingly little” protective gear available for employees, despite assurances from the Quebec government that equipment shortages across the province no longer exist.
Montreal nurses who have volunteered to work in a private long-term care home with a major COVID-19 outbreak said there is “shockingly little” protective gear available for employees, despite assurances from the Quebec government that equipment shortages across the province no longer exist.
Nurses from elsewhere in the network who have been called in to help at CHSLD Vigi Mont-Royal in the Town of Mount Royal describe fellow health-care workers wearing the same protective gear for hours — not changing gloves and masks between patients because there are not enough to spare.
According to the Quebec government’s latest figures, Vigi Mont-Royal is the fourth-most infected long-term care home in the province, with 157 residents, or 56 per cent, having tested positive for COVID-19.
One nurse who CBC has agreed not to identify described seeing some of the private home’s original staff working in jeans and T-shirts or simple scrubs. In one case, she said, she saw a worker wore a blanket wrapped around their clothing, as a makeshift gown.
The nurse said that staff were moving between so-called “hot zones” and “cold zones” without changing their protective equipment — a potential vector for the illness to spread.
“Even the residents who weren’t infected were now treated as being infected.”
“There’s no winning,” she said. “We don’t have the resources to have the proper practices and a normal standard of care.”
While the nurse said hospital