{"id":933524,"date":"2026-10-15T04:20:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T04:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/933524\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T04:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T04:20:21","slug":"new-acute-care-beds-a-much-needed-addition-to-sole-caraquet-hospital-er-doctor-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/933524\/","title":{"rendered":"New acute care beds a much-needed addition to sole Caraquet hospital, ER doctor says"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n

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Health-care providers at Caraquet’s only hospital are hopeful the addition of new acute care beds will bring shorter hospital wait times and support for staff.<\/p>\n

A unit featuring 10 acute care beds is now open at l’Hopital de l’Enfant-Jesus, bringing the hospital’s capacity from 12 to 22 beds.<\/p>\n

“This strengthens the team to offer a better quality of care and to support each other as a team, which is important in small hospitals like ours,” Dr. Gilbert Blanchard, a family physician who works at the hospital, told Radio-Canada in French.<\/p>\n

The unit, announced by the province Wednesday, creates about 25 new, full-time positions in nursing, physiotherapy and social work, according to the province.<\/p>\n

The hospital is the only one in Caraquet, with larger hospitals about 30 minutes away in Tracadie and 50 minutes in Bathurst.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

L’Hopital Enfant\u2011J\u00e9sus in Caraquet offers emergency care seven days a week as well as general medicine services and palliative care. (Vitalite Health Network)<\/p>\n

The hospital has faced staffing shortages and slowed down its overnight emergency services during an entire weekend last month due to a lack of doctors. <\/p>\n

Blanchard said the addition is vital for a hospital that has been seeing ER doctors leave.<\/p>\n

He told Radio-Canada on Tuesday he and another doctor in the region, Carl Boucher, will be returning to work at the emergency department to help bolster the team.<\/p>\n

Both have been dedicating their family practice to hospital care for years but felt it was time to help the ER, specifically.<\/p>\n

“It is certainly true that, in recent months, quite a few emergency physicians have jumped ship \u2026and filling the schedule this autumn was a major challenge,” Blanchard said.<\/p>\n

He said he feels a sense of responsibility to breathe new life into the team and to buy the hospital time to recruit new doctors.<\/p>\n

“It’s a stimulating environment, here, with many great challenges even though the practice in this region isn’t always easy.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Dany Paul Hach\u00e9, a patient being cared for in the new unit, said the rooms are comfortable and private. (Mario Landry\/Radio-Canada)<\/p>\n

The new acute care unit costs $8.3 million, according to the province.<\/p>\n

The individual rooms are designed to treat patients needing medical as well as palliative care.<\/p>\n

Equipped with modern equipment, they include a patient hoist to assist with mobility issues. <\/p>\n

Each is also a negative pressure room which prevents the spread of airborne diseases from spreading to reduce the harms of an outbreak.<\/p>\n

A release from Vitalit\u00e9 Health Network said the unit welcomed its first patient Oct. 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-933524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}