Quebec doctors who agree to help hard-pressed care homes describe ‘shock’

by Anne-Sophie Thill

As retirement homes in Quebec were being ravaged by COVID-19, a surgeon, an ophthalmologist, and a gastroenterologist were among many medical professionals who volunteered to help overstretched staff with the care and feeding of their vulnerable residents. The experience left them badly shaken.

Dr. Yves Bendavid, a 49-year-old surgeon, responded to an urgent plea from the province’s premier, Francois Legault, at a time when the fast-spreading virus was leaving the care homes desperately short of nursing staff.

Deployed to the Residence Bierman’s long-term care facility in Montreal on an evening shift, Bendavid said the scene awaiting him there came as a “shock”: severe staff shortages, inadequate protective materials, even infected patients not wearing masks.

“The patients were dehydrated — probably hadn’t had water all day,” he told AFP. “I thought I would be dispensing lots of medicine, and administering medical and nursing care. Instead, my biggest contribution was giving them glasses of water.”

“They had sunken eyes, dry mouths, rough tongues, and chapped lips,” he recalled. “We were in a long-term care center in Montreal, and people were thirsty because of a lack of personnel.”

On a single day, April 19, Bendavid prepared a body for a funeral home, served meals, changed patients’ diapers, and distributed medicine.

“I really didn’t expect to be distributing medicine,” he said, adding that it was a first for him. “It’s really a task usually reserved for nurses, for security reasons.” He said he worried that he might make a mistake in dosage. (AFP)