New Brunswick Health Minister Dr. John Dornan says he has followed through on a promise to spend 24 hours in a hospital emergency department’s waiting room.
Dornan says he spent a full day waiting in the Moncton Hospital’s emergency department from 10 a.m. on Friday to 10 a.m. on Saturday.
Dornan was invited earlier this month to be an eyewitness to how patients and their families endure hours of waiting for care.
“And it was quite difficult,” said Dornan. “It gave me insight, not complete, but insight into what people go through. People that are waiting for an extended period in the emergency department are often ill. I did not have that. I was not ill at the time. I had some level of preparation.”
Before becoming Health minister in 2024, Dornan served as an endocrinologist, ICU physician and former Horizon Health CEO. Dornan said the experience of waiting, and not working, in a hospital emergency department offered a different perspective.
“I have more empathy for people that were ill and had to wait extended periods,” said Dornan. “We need to do better.”
Dornan said he spoke with people who were waiting for emergency care at the Moncton Hospital, along with family members who were waiting with them.
“I did not tell people who I was,” said Dornan. “I had a mask on, so it was easy to be in there incognito. And people didn’t push me, just like I would not push other people. But they did volunteer their experiences. For many it wasn’t the first time they spent exceptional periods of time in the ER, and that’s sad.”
When asked, Dornan said he didn’t feel the need to spend another 24 hours in an emergency department waiting room, saying the experience this past weekend had taught him what he needed to know in his Health minister role. Dornan added that the New Brunswick government’s plans for collaborative health care clinics would address long emergency department wait times across the province.
-With files from CTV News Atlantic’s Laura Brown
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