The Sturgeon Community Hospital has officially closed its two pediatric beds, but sick children are still welcome in its emergency department.
In recent years the hospital has had two dedicated pediatric beds but reduced usage and staffing issues prompted officials to stop admitting children last June. Alberta Health Services recently made the closure permanent, said Linda Cargill, Alberta Health Services’ executive director of community and rural hospitals for the Edmonton zone.
Cargill stressed that the Sturgeon’s emergency department is still equipped to assess children and treat those who don’t require hospitalization.
“If we can keep them for a period of time and then send them home, we will do that, which is what we do now,” she said.
For children who need to be admitted, the Sturgeon can expedite a transfer to Stollery Children’s Hospital at the University of Alberta.
“The most important thing for the public to understand is if they have a sick child they still come to Sturgeon emergency,” Cargill said. “Access for pediatric patients really hasn’t changed.”
The closure is part of a long and gradual scaling back of pediatric services that’s been going on since children’s care was consolidated at the Stollery well over a decade ago, Cargill said.
“Over the last several years, more and more, we’ve sent children over to the Stollery because that’s where the expertise is,” she said.
The site will sort out what happens with the closed beds over time, Cargill said.
People are often afraid when services disappear from their local hospital, but in this case it should be reassuring, said University of Alberta health researcher Donna Wilson.
“Looking after children is a really distinct specialty,” she said. “Having two beds just isn’t enough to really keep up on pediatric care.”
Caring for children requires a whole team of specialists that includes doctors, nurses and other staff, like respiratory technicians, and the Stollery provides much safer and better care, she said.
“It’s more advanced than a bunch of people just bumbling along caring for two children at a time,” Wilson said.
St. Albert residents shouldn’t interpret the bed closure as a sign that more services will be phased out of the Sturgeon, Cargill said.
“Absolutely not. Sturgeon has some very core business,” she said.
The hospital will complete a modernization of its emergency department sometime this year. It will also continue to provide adult care, operate an intensive care unit, offer cardiac care, deliver babies and provide general and orthopedic surgery, Cargill said.
