The Chief of Staff at Royal Inland Hospital says the Emergency Department is still coping despite a “slight” influx in patients as influenza and RSV start to take a toll on British Columbians.
Speaking on the NL Noon Report, Dr. Todd Ring says the Kamloops hospital is currently operating at 115 per cent capacity, which he says is not unusual.
“Lately actually, our occupancy has been quite good. We’ve been into the 105 to 110 per cent capacity, which the hospital functions quite well at that level.”
With that being said, Dr. Ring says there is still a lot of pressure on the healthcare system, including RIH.
“We combine that pressure, with the fact that we are still in the post-pandemic phase and the staffing levels are continuing to be challenging at times, and it does put a lot of pressure on our staff.”
Everyone is working extremely hard, but certainly, at RIH here, we are still managing and coping with the volumes that are coming in the door,” he added.
Dr. Ring explains specifically, in the emergency room at RIH, they are seeing a couple of different demographics come in.
He says there are an increased number of children coming in with RSV.
“Certainly the concern is with younger children, as it can affect their respiratory system a little bit more because they haven’t developed antibodies,” he said.
“The good news is, is that the majority of otherwise well kids will deal with it just fine. They’ll have fever for a few days and some respiratory difficulties, but we’re speaking of very small numbers that need to be admitted.”
However, Dr. Ring says from a respiratory perspective, there has been an influx of children admitted to the pediatric unit in Kamloops.
As for Influenza, he says there has been a rise in cases in both adults and children.
“When we get into our older adult population or those patients that are immunocompromised or their immune system isn’t quite as strong, we will sometimes see those patients needing admissions to hospital,” said Dr. Ring.
“I think that that is something that we’re seeing when we look at our overall inpatient census kind of going up right now that we are seeing influenza as one of the main drivers behind that.”
Dr. Ring encourages people to get vaccinated against Influenza, COVID, and RSV, saying it will help to lower the severity of the illnesses, while also helping to prevent hospitalizations.