The overcrowding at the Lakeshore General Hospital emergency room was still at a tipping point Monday, but the hospital's administration assured that it scheduled enough staff to handle the additional workload.

On Saturday, nurses refused to report for the evening shift when the ER had more than 50 patients, but only five nurses were scheduled to work.

"Things are better today, they got through a difficult weekend," said Roberto Bomba, union vice-president. "It was a call for help. Let's make sure that they don't take serious sanctions against them."

Ambulances needed to be re-directed to other hospitals on Saturday, with only life or death emergencies being admitted as management pitched in to compensate for the missing nurses.

The emergency room's maximum is 31 patients; Saturday afternoon, the Pointe Claire hospital's ER rose to 55 patients.

The situation had not improved a great deal on Monday with 48 patients on stretchers in the ER, but hospital spokesperson Diane Somerville said the hospital scheduled enough staff to handle 51 patients.

Sommerville says the hospital always tries to anticipate overcrowding and always tries to plan accordingly. So what happened Saturday?

"Sometimes it doesn't work," she admitted.

Some staff members say the hospital is the victim of a vicious circle.

People take jobs at Lakeshore, but after a while they discover the overcrowding and chronic understaffing and they leave – thereby perpetuating the understaffing problem.

"It does happen to us and it does put us into that vicious circle," Somerville admitted.

One ER patient told CTV Montreal's Derek Conlon that she has seen the problem first hand.

"One time I came it was really, really bad," said the patient, who didn't want to be identified. "I waited - I had a lump out to here - and I was waiting outside for 16 hours in the emergency."

With a health clinic right across the street from the hospital many people opt to go there to try to avoid delays.

"I come here sometimes to see a doctor and I wait sometimes an hour, hour and a half, maximum two hours," said West Island resident Heidi Stewart.

The understaffing problem amounts to 15 vacant positions in the ER, or roughly the equivalent of a full shift of staff.

The hospital hopes to fill some of those positions in the next week or so, and also plans to hold meetings this summer to seek a long-term fix to the problem.