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<\/p>\nA physician Thursday pleaded with Calgarians to avoid risky behaviour to take the pressure off stressed emergency departments.<\/p>\n
Summer brings more trauma injuries into Alberta hospitals, with a growing number of them resulting from accidents involving e-scooters or bike-type vehicles, said Dr. Haley Cochrane, an emergency physician at the Peter Lougheed Centre.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately what we’re seeing is that head, face and neck injuries that come with the force of being thrown from these devices at higher speed,” said Cochrane.<\/p>\n
“It has been changing over the years, the popularity of a lot of these devices, the recreational use of these scooters which we didn’t see five or 10 years ago.”<\/p>\n
Between June 1 and Aug. 31 of last year, there were 33,000 emergency department visits in Alberta’s larger centres involving six of the most common injuries.<\/p>\n
The most frequent were arm, wrist and hand injuries, followed by leg, ankle and foot injuries, then cuts and lacerations followed by head injuries.<\/p>\n
Major trauma injuries from vehicle collisions or cycling crashes were the fifth most-frequent followed by allergic reactions.<\/p>\n
A common thread among people using various types of scooters is the absence of a helmet, said Cochrane.<\/p>\n
“When you’re picking up these devices that are commercially available, they are not often provided with helmets,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There have been a few companies that do provide them but no one really wants to wear them.”<\/p>\n
That seasonal uptick of injuries comes as emergency departments continue to struggle with long wait times impacted by beds downstream being occupied by patients who should be cared for in other settings, said Cochrane and her colleagues.<\/p>\n
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Dr Haley Cochrane, an emergency room physician in the parking area outside the Peter Lougheed Centre in northeast Calgary on Thursday, July 16, 2026.<\/p>\n
“What we’re really seeing is just volumes across the province are going up, we have a lot more people moving into the province,” said Cochrane, adding the issues extend beyond Alberta.<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen a lot of changes in our staffing related to burnout\u2026so we’re incredibly busy and in terms of building new hospitals and emergency departments, those things just take time.”<\/p>\n
She said public frustrations in emergency rooms are sometimes directed to health care workers, adding in at least one instance, a doctor was booed by those in a waiting room.<\/p>\n
“It’s heartbreaking for us because it’s frustrating and they take it out on staff\u2026and they’re just trying to do their best,” said Cochrane.<\/p>\n
Emergency rooms are only going to get worse says past AMA president<\/p>\n
A vocal critic of the UCP government’s handling of health care said many emergency departments are busier than they’ve ever been during the summer, which is normally slightly quieter due to the lack of respiratory disease patients.<\/p>\n
“We’ve never had crowding like this,” said Dr. Paul Parks, an emergency physician in Medicine Hat and past president of the Alberta Medical Association.<\/p>\n
He said it’s not unusual for wait times in Edmonton emergency departments to run eight to 12 hours. In Calgary on Thursday afternoon, the longest was at the Foothills Medical Centre at nearly 5\u00bd hours.<\/p>\n
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Dr. Paul Parks, past president of the Alberta Medical Association on April 17, 2024.<\/p>\n
He said emergency rooms in Edmonton are particularly squeezed but Calgary’s are only marginally better. Ambulance drop-offs at the South Health Campus, he said, are being left in a hallway with a plan to significantly increase those numbers.<\/p>\n
He said frontline workers are extremely concerned with the situation hospitals and their emergency departments will face in the fall given what they’re already dealing with.<\/p>\n
“We know we’re absolutely not prepared \u2014 the last (respiratory disease) season was one of the worst we’ve seen and we know this coming one will be, too,” said Parks.<\/p>\n
The province’s plan to allow doctors to practice in private setting to provide certain procedures that’s to being this fall will only diminish the number of practitioners in the public system, he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be the perfect storm and the government just isn’t listening,” said Parks, adding nurses and anesthesiologists numbers are most critical.<\/p>\n
The provincial government says the reforms in the health care system will free up time and space in the public system, reduce surgery wait times and help retain medical professionals in Alberta.<\/p>\n
As for ensuring there’s more space in the province’s emergency rooms, Cochrane said people should call 811 to seek advice before heading to the hospital and seek out walk-in clinics for minor injuries.<\/p>\n