Eight N.S. emergency rooms close for the holidays due to staffing

Seven N.S. emergency rooms to close over the Holidays Seven hospital emergency rooms across the province will be closed over the Holidays, due to a lack of doctors to staff them.

As Nova Scotians settle in for the holidays, several local hospital emergency rooms will be unavailable because they don’t have the staff to keep them running.

A total of eight local hospital emergency rooms will be closed for as many as five days over the holidays as the doctor shortage in the province continues.

“It's terrifying to live in a community where you don't have access to the services,” Karen Mattatall, the mayor of Shelburne, N.S., told CTV Atlantic.

The Roseway Hospital in Shelburne is among the closures over the holidays. Residents in need of services will be forced to travel more than 100 kilometres for treatment.

According to provincial data, more than 59,000 people in the province are waiting for a family doctor.

Dr. Tim Holland with Doctors Nova Scotia said some physicians and nurses are travelling to other hospitals to help fill some of the gap, while other hospitals have been limiting hours in order to spread shifts more evenly.

Randy Delorey, the province’s health minister, notes that regional hospitals never close and that the province has offered premium pay for working over the holidays.

The seven other hospitals closing over the holidays are: