One doctor who works at BCH said, on the condition of anonymity, that absenteeism is the new normal at BCH. The facility is severely understaffed on account of nurses and other frontline staff taking stress leave.

The doctor said they’re overwhelmed, burnt out and stressed.

The majority of doctors across Ontario surveyed reported similar experiences. Concerned Ontario Doctors recently surveyed 5,000 front-line physicians (MDs) and found 63 per cent of the doctors admitted experiencing burnout. Almost all attributed that to carrying heavy workloads with shoe-string resources.

Case in point, BCH does not have the resources to handle premature babies (babies born fewer than approximately 32 weeks gestational age). These infants have to be moved to a neonatal facility in Toronto. Often, doctors will spend frustrating minutes on the phone arranging to have the infant transported, only to be told by their counterparts in the Toronto hospital that they don’t have a team available.

The situation is not limited to obstetrics but unfolds on other floors as well when patients have to be handed to the care of trauma, rehab and other specialized facilities, a doctor explained.

“What the politicians don’t understand is that a lot of our decisions are time based,” the doctor said. “If you don’t have people or resources in place when you need them, patients can die. If you stretch the system to the max, then you’re going to have victims.”

The hallway of horrors

As anniversaries go, Brampton’s Jamie-Lee Ball, 24, literally shudders when this one made its way in a conversation.

In March last year, Ball unwittingly became the face of Ontario’s health-care crisis. As Hallway Patient # 1, Ball chronicled the chaos, confusion and lack of care at Brampton Civic Hospital where she was stuck on a gurney and placed in the hallway for five days.

Afterwards, the Brampton woman and her mother Lori Leckie started advocating for patient care. Despite their tireless work over the past year, Leckie and Ball say the horror stories of hallway medicine coming out of BCH have not slowed.

“Whenever I visit the hospital, I still see elderly patients in the hallways and their family members stressed and hurting besides them,” Ball said. “It’s heartbreaking and disappointing that even after everything we have done (in terms of advocacy) to bring the issues to light, things haven’t improved.”

Between April 2016 and April 2017, BCH treated 4,352 patients in its hallways. September last year, Queen’s Park announced 37 new beds for BCH. This was in addition to the existing 608 beds.

When the campaign buses roll into Brampton soon, Ball vowed she, along with other Bramptonians will be front and centre asking what the candidates plan to do to improve patient care in Brampton.

** Editor's Note: This story was updated at 11:59 a.m. on Monday, April 9 to correct the spelling of Jamie-Lee Ball's name and to include information from a recent Concerned Ontario Doctors survey of 5,000 front-line physicians.