Saskatchewan health care system a central topic in next week’s election as workers say it is ‘barely surviving’

Timely care and privacy are considered by health care workers to be a luxury in Saskatoon’s overcrowded emergency departments these days. Catheters are being inserted behind opaque glass. Abdominal exams are being performed in hallways. Wounds are being stitched and dressed in waiting room chairs as patients cry in pain.And health care workers are having to walk through a maze of patients crammed into corridors, storage rooms and makeshift quarters separated by curtains so thin that family members on the other side have had to hear their loved ones unexpectedly go into cardiac arrest and die. Final goodbyes are said aloud in the crowded area.