Alberta doctors invite premier, health minister to visit ICU: ‘We need you to see’

Kenney, Copping, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, Dr. Deena Hinshaw and AHS CEO Dr. Verna Yiu are scheduled to provide a COVID-19 update Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.

Alberta ER doctors have issued an “urgent” invitation to the premier and health minister to visit an ICU in person to witness “the unfathomable horrors we face in the hospitals everyday.”

In a letter sent Monday, Oct. 4, the section of emergency medicine of the Alberta Medical Association asked Jason Kenney and Jason Copping to “visit an Edmonton-area ICU as soon as possible to see it for yourselves.”

The letter is signed by Dr. Paul Parks, the head of emergency medicine for the Alberta Medical Association. Parks said in late September that major components of triage have already begun in Alberta, even though the protocol hasn’t officially been implemented.

The group said Tuesday it had not received a response from the premier or health minister yet. Global News has also reached out to the province about this invitation. The article will be updated when a response is received.

Kenney, Copping, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw and AHS CEO Dr. Verna Yiu are scheduled to provide a COVID-19 update Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. It will be streamed live in this article post.

“Maintaining distance is necessary to get through this pandemic, but when policy leaders maintain distance from the hospitals where policy is implemented, an adaptive mechanism becomes harmful,” the letter reads.

There have been more than 1,000 new daily cases of COVID-19 for weeks and Alberta Health Services has had to reassign staff to handle the surge of intensive care patients. There have been mass cancellations of non-urgent surgeries as a result.

“From a distance, it’s easier to look at numbers on a page and persuade yourself that there is still space, because you can’t see the maneuvering behind increasing those numbers,” the letter continues. “Surge ICU beds are metastasizing into every other part of the hospital, rapidly crowding out every other function our hospital should be able to serve; we are only able to find more space because so many are dying, and urgent surgeries have been postponed indefinitely.