The first day of the holiday long weekend has been sunny and perfect for people wanting to enjoy the beach, boating or the cottage.
But weekends like this are busy working weekends for one group of people in cottage country: paramedics and emergency room workers.
A trip to the ER wasn't in Lynn Timberg's long-weekend plans, but some cottage cleaning landed her at South Muskoka Memorial Hospital with a banged up knee.
“I was up on a ladder in the cottage trying to decide on more storage space and lost my balance fell off the ladder and banged up my knee,” she says.
Timberg is just one of the hundreds of people who will come through these ER doors this weekend.
“Typically on the long weekends we see twice our normal values,” says ER Dr. Anthony Shearing. “Our average volume during this year is 50 or 60 in a 24 hour period, on long weekends it's probably 100 to 125 patients in 24 hours.”
And being in cottage country they see some unique injuries.
“We see a lot of tubing injuries, concussions from banging heads together, turned ankles, fish hooks in strange places.”
Being a doctor, nurse or paramedic in cottage country has its unique challenges.
“We do go out on boats, snowmobiles in the winter, ATVs in the summer, which is unique because we can treat the patient sooner rather than waiting for them to come to us,” says Stuart McKinnon, a paramedic in Bracebridge.
He says so far, this has been one of the busiest summers in years.
“Seems like the area is busier this year also the weather plays a part,” he says. “If people are outside there are more ways to get injured and more things that can injure them.”
The hospital and emergency management service both bring in additional staff to work long weekends to deal with the extra calls and crowded waiting rooms.
The goal of the emergency department is to have patients seen by a doctor in less than two hours, a target they reach during most of the year. But in the summer, when patients nearly double, those targets become harder to hit and wait times increase.
