'It's very, very sad': Daughter says she was called to Victoria hospital to feed mother due to staffing shortage

Helen Bell got what she describes as an alarming phone call from a nurse at Victoria's Royal Jubilee Hospital on Monday morning, at 7:43 a.m., asking her family to feed her mother because the hospital was too short staffed to do so.

"They needed us to come in and feed my mother for breakfast, lunch and supper, if she was going to get fed today," said Bell on Monday.

Bell's mother, 87-year-old Margaret Mears, is in acute care at the hospital and is disabled. She's unable to use her hands right now to feed herself, so she relies on others to do that.

What’s more, her daughter says Mears has only been given one shower in the past month.

"You just think that those basic things of taking care of somebody—feeding them, cleaning them—should just be something we can take for granted in the hospital," said Bell.

Bell doesn't fault the staff at all, in fact she praises the nurse for doing the responsible thing by seeking help when it was needed.

She says it’s the system that’s stretched too thin by COVID, noting that staff's off work because they're sick, compounding the strain of approximately 1,000 patients in B.C. hospitals with COVID-19.

"Not only are (COVID patients) having a rough time themselves, they’re impacting other people that are in the hospital, and the hospital system is not very robust right now," said Bell.

Bell thinks the public needs to know just how fragile the health-care system is, and how big of an impact COVID-19 is having on the system.

Between Jan. 24 and Jan. 26, more than 1,800 healthcare workers in Island Health were off sick with COVID-19 or other illnesses.

Still, in a statement to CTV News, the Ministry of Health said Monday that capacity issues are not impacting the feeding of patients. However, the ministry noted health-care workers are grateful for the help of patients' families.

There's no disputing the stress that staffing shortages due to COVID have created at hospitals across B.C.

Dr. David Forrest is an infectious disease specialist who works at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. He says the biggest impact he's seen so far is staff being overworked.

"I think the major effect of this is it's causing increasing burnout amongst health-care workers, most particularly nursing staff," said Forrest on Monday.

Island health didn't respond Monday to CTV's request for a comment on this story.

The province told CTV News in its statement Monday that it will have more to announce soon regarding the significant capacity issues for healthcare throughout B.C.

For Bell and her mother, help with staffing and capacity issues is needed now

"Well, she's crying," said Bell when asked how her mother is responding to the situation. "She's not getting good care in the very last bit of her life and it’s very, very sad."