Royal Inland Hospital's expanded emergency department now includes a dedicated mental health wing.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Interior Health

The emergency room at the hospital in Kamloops is expanding, and it’s not just for broken bones and stitches.

A dedicated mental health area at Royal Inland Hospital’s emergency department just opened, and it means not only privacy but separation from the often-crowded treatment area.

“I’m really hoping this mental health and substance use area being private and being removed from the main department area may have some people willing to come in and talk to a professional,” hospital executive Gerry Desilets said. “I hate to think of people struggling out there on their own and not thinking there’s an option for them.”

Desilets, in charge of clinical operations at Royal Inland Hospital, said it’s part of a multi-year expansion in the emergency department. It’s the third of five steps in the renovation project.

The new space dedicated to mental health care opened last week, bringing mental health patients who might have been waiting in hallways or separated by curtains to secure, private treatment rooms.

“(Mental health is) often an area that doesn’t get it’s own space — they’re in hallway spaces. How can you truly have a proper conversation with a physician when there’s a curtain between you and five other people?” he said.

While a dedicated mental health wing isn’t new for emergency departments in large centres, it’s uncommon for the Interior region and a first for Royal Inland, Interior Health’s second-largest hospital.

Desilets said the addition won’t necessarily mean there are more staff, already including doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and social workers, but it does mean more safety precautions for them and other patients.

The addition signals an expanded view of what patients can expect from health care workers at the emergency department, he said.

“I think too many of us have at times said, ‘I’ll be OK and I’ll just get through this, but if you broke your leg you wouldn’t be powering through. I think that’s the normalization we need to get, Desilets said.

Whether it will alleviate pressure on the in-patient psychiatric ward is yet to be seen, but he said the new area in the ER has received a warm welcome from staff.

The emergency department is part of a wider expansion project to much of Royal Inland following the Gaglardi Tower construction. Budgeted at around $417 million in total, it ballooned by an estimated $40 million as of last year.

The construction phase following the tower’s opening was itself estimated to cost around $53 million in 2016, but that number rose substantially with an update last year. Desilets couldn’t say how much of that went to the emergency room mental health unit specifically.

“It does come at a bit of a cost, but I do think we try really hard to be fiscally responsible and being smart with the dollars our taxpayers are giving us,” he said. “I do take that quite seriously that we are funded by public dollars and we’re here to provide a service responsibly.”

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