Patients across the country can spend days on stretchers and in storage rooms waiting for beds
Natalie Stechyson, CBC News
Posted: Mar 13, 2026
Six days in an overflow stretcher. Beds in storage rooms. Patients dying in their seats.
No, we’re not describing an episode of HBO’s gritty medical drama The Pitt. These are real-life scenes playing out in Canada’s emergency rooms.
From Carbonear, N.L., where a man recently died of a heart attack during a 10-hour wait to see a doctor, to Calgary, where a woman pleaded “please don’t let me die” during the hours she bled onto a stretcher in the ER, hospitals are bursting at the seams as backlogs and access issues affect patient flow.
“I think we’re close to the breaking point,” Dr. Margot Burnell, the president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), told CBC News.
The issue for emergency departments is that they can’t control who comes through their doors, said Burnell, a medical oncologist in Saint John, N.B. ERs are not only seeing increased numbers, but the patients that come through are also more medically complex.
Read more at CBC News
