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Health-care experts have called on the government to set national standards.
Health-care experts have called on the government to set national standards.
(Sandi Krasaowski for The Globe and Mail)

Faced with doctor shortages, some emergency rooms struggle to stay open

One hospital is forced to close its emergency ward some evenings. Another is staffing its ER after hours with doctors working extra shifts. And a third is grappling with a shortage of emergency doctors by luring new recruits with generous incentive pay.

The Glace Bay Hospital in Cape Breton, N.S., shut its emergency department from 4 p.m. until 7 a.m. the next morning for three days this month. The Pasqua Hospital in Regina avoided a similar fate this week after doctors agreed to work additional shifts – its emergency doors were slated to shut between 7:30 p.m. and 8 a.m. And, in Thunder Bay, home to Canada’s second-busiest emergency department, the hospital has been hit with an exodus of doctors. Six of the 27 emergency doctors resigned from Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre this summer. Another three retired over the past 16 months.