Emergency! A Critical Situation

Overcrowding. Budget cuts. Massive layoffs and early retirement. After years of cutbacks and restructuring, how is our health-care system holding up? To find out, director Tahani Rached takes us to the emergency room for an inside look at the working lives of men and women who deal with the fallout every single day: the ER nurses. Shot at the Pierre Boucher Hospital in suburban Montreal, this powerful film takes us into the emergency room. Emergency! A Critical Situation is a powerful indictment of management that sees only the bottom line. An orderly squirrels away snacks for ER patients to supplement the meagre two cartons of juice and five small packs of cookies the hospital doles out; nurses try to keep patients calm as waiting times stretch to six hours; tension mounts as staff try to determine who to see first--knowing that errors can prove fatal. While the nurses are bitter about being forced to work under such intolerable conditions, none would give up the profession. All are passionate about saving lives and doing their best to bring dignity to the chaos of the ER. In French with English subtitles.