I would tend to agree, and Manitoba's nurses' unions agree as well.
Ms. Schulz from the Alzheimer Society, this is something that's been a problem. It's been going on for years, certainly in my own emergency medicine practice in Manitoba. This may be happening in other provinces.
Patients with dementia would present to the emergency department from the community. Very often they live alone, and a concerned neighbour has found them wandering in their pyjamas in January. They obviously can't go home because there is just no stable environment for them.
What has been the practice, at least in Winnipeg's hospitals, is that the people who are in charge of admitting patients—deciding that a patient goes to a ward—have policies there now that they will not admit patients to hospital if there is no acute medical problem. If the only problem is dementia, they are kept in the emergency department until an appropriate centre is found for them.
This has, on more than one occasion that I can recall, taken over a month. You didn't mishear that. We're talking about a patient with dementia spending a month in an emergency department.
Is this ethically defensible?