An acute nursing shortage is clogging or even closing hospital emergency rooms across Canada, pushing an already stressed national health system to the brink with potentially severe consequences for patient care.

Burnout from the Covid-19 pandemic, abuse from patients, and salary discontent have seen nursing staff quitting their jobs in droves, and experts say the situation is only likely to worsen.

The impact on emergency care is such that Ottawa police recently had to take a shooting victim to hospital in their squad car, rather than wait for an ambulance, and an elderly woman who fell and broke her hip was forced to wait six hours for help from paramedics based 100 kilometers (62 miles) away.

Over the summer and into the fall, staffing shortages meant dozens of emergency rooms were forced to close — sometimes for a night or a weekend, sometimes longer.

Wait times to see an ER doctor have soared to 12, 16, 20 hours — or more.

"They're numb, deflated, and feeling hopeless," said Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association. Herself a nurse for 20 years, she described the situation as "critical."

Amelie Inard, 32, was taken to an ER in Montreal this week, in extreme pain and peeing blood.

The place was packed, and an overwrought nurse told her to describe her condition "in one sentence, really quickly, because of how busy they were," Inard said.

She eventually left in frustration, without seeing a doctor.

Hospital workloads are rising, Hoy said, along with patients' exasperation over extended wait times, leading to a spiking of violence against nurses.

Several nurses told AFP they had been punched, scratched or spat on, and had trays, dishes, and feces thrown at them.

'Crazy conditions'

In the capital Ottawa, ambulances were unavailable on more than 1,000 occasions from January to July, as paramedics were stuck waiting to unload patients at crowded ERs.