(Image credit: Mel Rothenburger)

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: Thin red line leads, eventually, to the emergency department

Dec 17, 2022 | 8:02 AM

A THIN RED LINE runs from the front of Royal Inland Hospital all the way to the back. It has nothing to do with Rudyard Kipling or the Sean Penn movie. It’s a literal thin red line on the floor, and if you follow it you will eventually make your way from the visitor parkade to the ER.

It’s a little like the Amazing Race, taking you down a maze of hallways, around corners, up and down stairs, through doors and, occasionally, to dead ends. It’s a necessary result of some serious renovations being done in the hospital.

Of course, if you arrive at the ER short-term parking area (there are two of them right now to accommodate the construction work) you can still walk more or less directly into the ER, but if you’re visiting somebody who has ended up in Emergency or you’re a walking wounded yourself, you’ll likely have to leave your vehicle in the big parkade, pay the toll and hoof it along the thin red line. You may as well strap on your Fitbit or Apple Watch while you’re at it and rack up some steps.

At the end of the trek, you’ll find things have changed in Emerg if you haven’t been there for a while. The anti-COVID security measures are gone — you can walk right in without being stopped by a security guard, and friends or relatives can go in with you (unlike the last time I wrote about the ER).

The place still buzzes with security personnel, police and paramedics and, of course, the sick and injured and the folks who have brought them there.

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You really should pay a visit to the ER once a year or so whether you need it or not. Well, maybe not but it’s enlightening with respect to how the front end of the healthcare system works.

The waiting area is still too small and you still must sit cheek by jowl with a bunch of other miserable people with a range of health issues going on, and ranging in age from around 10 to 85. It seems as though every one of them is hacking and coughing.

You’re still assigned a blue chair or a red chair depending on what stage of assessment you’re at. When you get the call and walk through the locking doors into the ER proper, it’s a scene of organized chaos as always. Nurses and doctors hurry about attending to the needs of patients, who are either assigned a bed or directed to a chair to sit in.

Later in the afternoon the ambulances begin arriving and the pace picks up considerably (along with the number of people crowding the waiting area on the other side of the doors). A middleaged fellow who has taken too much of the wrong substance slumps in a chair, occasionally snoring. Eventually, he’s given a gentle pep talk and some Narcan to take with him and sent on his way.

An impatient elderly woman meekly attempts to get the attention of a doctor or nurse because she wants to go home. When her doctor releases her a while later, a nurse arranges a ride for her.

Somewhere on the other side of the ER, a woman with a broken leg screams in pain as she dries out and waits to be taken to surgery. Parents and their kids come and go, most of them receiving the assurance that the child has the everyday sniffles rather than the flu.

A nurse acknowledges cheerfully — yes, cheerfully — that she’s been on the job for 13 hours. In the background of all the hubbub, thumps and bangs and crashes provide a rhythm section for the ER ballet. It’s the sweet sound of progress — construction on upgrades to the building. It’s part of what’s called Phase 2, following in the footsteps of the recently opened Phil and Jennie Gaglardi Tower.

The entire phase won’t be finished until 2026 but the upgrades to the ER will be completed by 2024. It will be officially called the Teck Emergency Department thanks to a $2.5 million donation from Teck. That’s the way it is these days — more and more, corporate and private funding builds public facilities. You pays your money and gets your name on a sign or a plaque, which is the least that can be done for major donors.

I doubt it will be known as anything but the ER, especially to those who have to make use of it. Meanwhile, medical staff carry on doing their amazing work with what they’ve got in the existing space. A five and a half hour visit passes slowly but it’s actually pretty quick since it gets you triage, admittance, blood pressure, an ECG, blood work (sometimes twice), an examination by a doctor, an X-Ray and, if needed, a CT scan.

When you get the all-clear and are buzzed through the door and go back out into the hospital, it’s time to retrace your steps on the thin red line, which isn’t any easier than it was going in. But as you make your way back to your vehicle, you have time to reflect on all the crises hospitals are going through, and be thankful you weren’t there for 12 hours or longer like the horror stories you read about.

Even more, though, you’re thankful for the men and women who keep the place going.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, former TNRD director and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.