An emergency physician working at the Jewish General Hospital says he’s experiencing the results of under-staffing at seniors’ residences first hand.
Dr. Vihn Kim Nguyen says the Jewish General is seeing more and more seniors admitted — not necessarily for COVID-19, but because of issues related to dehydration and starvation. “We started to see a shift in the kinds of patients we’ve admitted to the hospital,” Nguyen told Global News. “More and more patients are coming from old-age homes, nursing homes and CHSLD long-term care facilities, most of them coming in with dehydration, hypernatremia, high blood sodium, renal failure.” He says the massive staff shortage in seniors’ homes means in many cases the elderly are not being sufficiently fed