I stepped into the Regina General Hospital emergency department on a Monday morning in late April. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead as nurses rushed between crowded hallway beds, their faces etched with the kind of exhaustion that comes from working well beyond reasonable limits. In one corner, an elderly man had been waiting 16 hours for a bed upstairs. A young mother cradled her feverish toddler, approaching hour seven of her wait.
“We’re doing the best we can with what we have,” whispered Nurse Leanne, who asked that I change her name to protect her job. “But what we have isn’t nearly enough.”
The scene I witnessed reflects a growing crisis that reached a breaking point last month when more than 100 Regina General Hospital staff signed an unprecedented letter to hospital leadership. The letter, obtained by Global News, detailed how chronic staffing shortages had created “dangerous and unsustainable” conditions that put both healthcare workers and patients at risk.
“We’ve been raising alarms about staffing for years,” Dr. Sarah Gryba, an emergency physician who helped organize the letter, told me when we met at a coffee shop near the hospital. “But when you have multiple critical patients and not enough hands, you reach a point where silence becomes complicit.”
According to internal documents from the Saskatchewan Health Authority, Regina General Hospital operated with nursing vacancy rates between 20-30% throughout the winter months. This translates to entire sections of emergency departments and inpatient units running with skeleton crews—sometimes with half the staff required by the hospital’s own safety standards.
The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses reports that overtime hours across Regina hospitals doubled between 2022 and early 2024, with many nurses routinely working 16-hour shifts. What was once considered an emergency staffing situation has become the new normal.
“I used to love my job,” says Michael Redenbach, a nurse with 12 years of experience at Regina General. “Now I go home wondering if someone died because we couldn’t get to them fast enough.”
For Indigenous communities who rely heavily on Regina General’s services, the staffing crisis compounds existing barriers to equitable healthcare. Brenda Dubois, a community health advocate from Muscowpetung First Nation, explained that many Indigenous patients already face longer wait times and communication challenges.
“When the system is strained like this, those with the least power suffer first and worst,” Dubois said. “We’re seeing elders giving up and going home untreated after waiting 10, 12 hours. That’s not healthcare—that’s abandonment.”
The crisis in Regina mirrors nationwide healthcare staffing challenges, but Saskatchewan faces unique pressures. The province has one of Canada’s lowest nurse-to-population ratios according to Statistics Canada data, while facing some of the highest rates of chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease that drive hospital admissions.
What’s particularly concerning is how the situation evolved from manageable understaffing to what the letter describes as “imminent risk of preventable deaths.” Staff describe a perfect storm: COVID-19 burned out existing workers, frozen wages drove experienced nurses to neighboring provinces or private sector jobs, and training programs couldn’t produce graduates fast enough to fill the widening gaps.
The letter prompted emergency meetings between hospital administration and staff representatives. Saskatchewan Health Authority officials acknowledged the severity of concerns but pointed to ongoing recruitment campaigns and recent provincial budget increases for healthcare staffing.
“We understand the immense pressure our frontline teams are facing,” said SHA spokesperson Jennifer Miller in a written statement. “The additional $98 million allocated for healthcare workforce recruitment and retention in the latest provincial budget will help address these challenges.”
But healthcare workers I spoke with remain skeptical that help will arrive in time. They point to previous promises of reinforcements that never materialized at the bedside.
“Budget announcements don’t staff tomorrow’s shift,” said one emergency department charge nurse who requested anonymity. “We need immediate relief before someone dies on my watch because we’re stretched too thin.”
The letter has sparked debate about how Saskatchewan can rebuild its healthcare workforce. While money is
