Man dies after 34 hours in ER without getting treatment

[TenPenny]

Obviously you have a family doctor. ER is where I have to go to get scripts filled - even heart meds! The clinics don't know me. Anyone can walk in and say they need drugs. I'm also one of those people too patient for my own good....

Actually, no, I don't...and there's a waiting list of about 4000 people here.

But I don't go to ER for prescriptions - that's what afterhours clinics are for.

 

[TenPenny]

In Ontario, a specialist won't see you unless you are referred by a GP - and a clinic doc referral isn't forever.

That's the way it works in NB, too. And guess what? The people who have serious, life threatening conditions, get seen pretty quickly. I've seen the system at work.

 

[Praxius]

I don't think that's a flaw in the system... that's a flaw in our own perceptions. A broken wrist is probably less emergent than a chest cold when it comes right down to it. Yeah, it hurts like a bitch and it does eventually need attention, but, you're not likely to die of it.... especially if it was an injured to a degree that you were willing to walk away without being seen, and remained unsure if there was actually a break.

I figured you or someone else would say that.

When the colouring of the area goes to a dark purple, hurts like a son'o'a'biatch, snaps, crackles and pops like rice crispies and is more bumpier then normal, I think it is safe to say it was broken.

Some of the reasons why I left was #1 - I have things I needed to do, that if I didn't, I would be out of work and #2 - I do have some background in some medical situations to know a thing or two on what is going on and what needs to be done...... I was far better off treating myself then waiting there for another unknown number of hours, missing time off work and no longer having a job.

You'd think that in a situation like that, work would give the time off or some form of protection due to medical reasons would give me more time to sit around and wait for my wrist to fuse together improperly due to idiots not doing their jobs, but there wasn't.

And the funny thing was some 15 year old girl came in screaming and crying her sorry ass off from breaking her ankle while playing soccer in high school..... oh.... and she didn't even wait 5 seconds before they dragged her in to get treated..... while I was waiting there for a few hours myself.

How fokked is that? I guess sports players get priority over people who have to actually work.

Then again, maybe I should have started crying and screaming my little head off too.

With my middle right toe that broke on the job (Twice I might add) I didn't even bother to go into the hospital because it would have been more of the same bullsh*t. And besides there wasn't anything they could do for a broken toe besides cast my entire foot up..... probably my leg my father mentioned.... and therefore I wouldn't be able to work regardless.

Apparently money comes first over health, because if you have no money in this sort of society, you're health follows suit.

I know that to you a broken wrist seems like a huge injury, and severe pain. But to an emergency room worker, it's pretty minor and not worth checking up on you over, let alone hurrying you in if things are already busy.

Well thank you for marginalizing the situation, but to clarify, no, there was a total of maybe 8 people sitting around wondering what the hell was going on. All were vegitating, reading their magazines, and most had even more minor issues, like sore muscles, some arthritis issues, the flu, etc.

Above broken bones, there's not much else that could be more severe except maybe a plague, someone bleeding from the neck, an alien trying to lunge out from your stomach, an apendix exploding out of your nose, etc...... all of which I could very well understand someone going ahead of me..... but this wasn't the case in this paticular day.

All the nurses and doctors were just stolling along, shooting the sh*t back and forth, laughing it up about what so-in-so did the other day..... so don't tell me about their fk'n priorities.

There have been times we've been rushed in... loss of consciousness, severe bleeding, and impaired ability to breathe. There are times we haven't been rushed in, and a broken bone was one of those times.

Yeah I seen a guy sitting two seats away from me who got himself to the ER after a car accident, was bleeding all over the god damn place, in and out of conciousness, and all they did was send a nurse out to give him something to cover his wound so he would stop making a mess..... he was sitting there for over an hour.

But hey.... he got there on his own, so I guess it wasn't at all serious.

I could understand your views if was talking about a situation where I went to a hospital in a big city with a hundred or so people sitting and waiting to be seen, but each time I have gone it's been no more then 15 or so people at a time sitting and waiting.

One person would go in per 45 minutes to an hour, if that.

And when I was a kid with a minor cold, I could remember as clear as day that I wasn't waiting around for any longer then an hour...... now with something even more serious, and not just myself but others, it's well over 3 hours on average.

So you may think there might not be anything wrong with the system.... I say there is.... esspecially when you compare it to 20 years ago. And since I have a few family members who work at a few of the hospitals around the province, and they too say it's nothing like it used to be and has gone down the crapper.... I'd have to disagree with your assumption.

And when some homeless guy enters the hospital and waits for 34 hours to see someone and then dies..... there is something seriously wrong.

 

[Praxius]

That's all fine and dandy for you in the land of milk, honey and Canadian doctors. WE have a shortage. They all went where the money is. If you happen to be one of the great many without a GP who need medical care in Canada now, you get second-rate care at a walk-in clinic ... or in ER.

Which is the case for many people where I am living..... over 50% of the population doesn't have a family doctor, because there arn't enough.... so they either have to goto a walk-in clinic and wait just as long as an ER, or goto the ER and wait just as long as the Walk-In Clinic.

And if you have a broken arm or leg or broken anything.... the walk-in clinics are just going to send you to the ER anyways to get treated, so you waste more time in the Walk-In and then waste even more time waiting in the ER.

What kind of a fokked up system is that?

Oh yeah, and I went to a walk-in one time after my toe started to change colour for about a week, and guess how long I waited there?

Four Hours.

I then got in, told them the situation, and they simply told me I must have dropped something on my foot and then sent me out the fk'n door.

I'm pretty sure I would remember dropping something on my own damn foot.

Walk-Ins are are peice of sh*t if you ask me...... so what's the only other solution?

The ER.

At least now I have a family doctor after having to move to where one was.

The whole medical system is a piece of crap.

 

[Tonington]

Which is the case for many people where I am living..... over 50% of the population doesn't have a family doctor...

That's not true. NS has the best access to GP's in the whole country. It's only 1 in 20 Nova Scotians who don't have a family doctor. That's 95% with access, compared to the National average which is 86%. That's from the last Canadian Community Health Survey, five years ago. There's still a shortage, but not >50% of Halifax :roll:

 

[lone wolf]

That's the way it works in NB, too. And guess what? The people who have serious, life threatening conditions, get seen pretty quickly. I've seen the system at work.

So have I ... from an Ontario perspective - and went full arrest on the table. Maybe you have it better than you realize....

 

[TenPenny]

So have I ... from an Ontario perspective - and went full arrest on the table. Maybe you have it better than you realize....

Full arrest on the table is somewhat better than doing the same in an ambulance in a 20 min drive to the hospital!
But my mother's okay now.
Hope you are too.

 

[lone wolf]

Actually, no, I don't...and there's a waiting list of about 4000 people here.

But I don't go to ER for prescriptions - that's what afterhours clinics are for.

...except for those cases where the clinics ARE ER. That's a town the size of Sturgeon Falls and all of West Nipissing. Sudbury has about ten walk-ins - and due to municipal by-laws, they are closed between 10 pm and 8 am. Where do you go? ...ER. Work two-and-a-half minimum wage jobs to scratch by? Need script? The clinic's closed. Where do you go? ...ER.

There is a waiting list of over thirty thousand people in the Sudbury region alone. Federal health care cuts may have crippled the system. Mike Harris caps and cuts killed it in Ontario.... And this is the sort of Common Sense Harper wants to spring on Canada? Forget the gun control. Beware the owner....

 

[Praxius]

That's not true. NS has the best access to GP's in the whole country. It's only 1 in 20 Nova Scotians who don't have a family doctor. That's 95% with access, compared to the National average which is 86%. That's from the last Canadian Community Health Survey, five years ago. There's still a shortage, but not >50% of Halifax :roll:

I stand corrected.... of course I was going by memory on a study I read a few years back, but based on this in 2005:

"While the statistics show that Nova Scotians have the best access to family doctors in the country, many of our communities have experienced recruitment challenges leaving thousands of people with no family doctor...."

http://www.gov.ns.ca/news/details.asp?id=20050517003

chances are, things have changed since 2005..... but the report in which I got the 50% mark from was based on a rural study in places such as the Valley, South Shore, etc.... where it is hard to get doctors to move to..... or it was. Places like Sydney, the HRM, etc. have a 95%..... but of course the %'s differ depending on where you look.

 

[Praxius]

Update:

A man waited 34 hours in the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre emergency room, but died without getting treatment.

Man who died waiting 34 hours in ER identified
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080923/er_wait_080923/20080923?hub=Canada

A man who died while waiting 34 hours for care in a Winnipeg emergency room has been identified.

Brian Sinclair, 45, died at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre (WHSC) in what some are calling the worst emergency room failure in Manitoba's history.

Sinclair, who was reportedly homeless, arrived at the emergency room on Friday at 3 p.m. He was finally attended to at 1 a.m. on Sunday and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said he was pronounced dead a short time later.

"For reasons we can't explain right now, he was never presented at the triage desk where we have triage nurses that assess someone's clinical situation," said Dr. Brock Wright, the head of the WRHA.

Wright now confirms what CTV Winnipeg reported Monday - that Sinclair sat dead in the waiting room for some time before anyone realized he had passed away.

A patient in the same hospital waiting room as Sinclair says he told nurses and security workers he was concerned about the man -- but says he was told they were too busy to check on him.

There you have it.

The witness -- who spoke to CTV Winnipeg on the condition of anonymity -- said he was in the waiting room Friday evening. Sinclair, who had both his legs amputated, was sitting nearby in a wheelchair and appeared to be sleeping.

The witness said when he returned to the waiting area the next night Sinclair was sitting in the exact same position.

"I didn't think he was asleep, so we went to tell a nurse," said the witness, who was there with his wife. "The nurse said 'We'll go and check,' [but] nobody ever went and checked on him."

That sure sounds familiar. "Oh yeah, we'll get right on it." then when you turn the corner, they go back to chatting about what they did this past weekend.

The witness said he waited an hour before asking another nurse to check on Sinclair but the nurse told him she was too busy and couldn't check right away.

The witness claims he told a security officer of the man's condition, but said the guard told him the case would be "too much paperwork."

FFS.....

Sinclair is seen on the hospital's security camera footage when he arrived at the department's main entrance Friday afternoon.

He is not in the footage the entire time, but health officials say they believe the man was in the waiting room for the full 34 hours. It's also believed the man interacted with aides and cleaning staff, but not medical staff.

Why the hell wouldn't he have contacted medical staff? Apparently he was there for a reason.... I'm pretty sure he stepped foot into a hospital before and knew how the system worked, just like everybody else.... I'm sure he didn't amputate his legs by himself in the past.

What a cop out. He went to the hospital for a reason.... that reason, whatever it was, killed him..... the hospital is completely to blame as I see it, as witnesses even notified them about his visual condition, even if he didn't himself.... which I highly doubt.

I don't know of anybody, homeless or not, who just sits in a hospital ER for 34 hours just for the fun of it. Even if he was cold or some other poor excuse, he's gotta go eat and take a dump..... clearly it was serious enough for him to stay until someone checked on him.

Which never happened.

"The challenge for us right now is to explain how it is somebody could be in the department for 34 hours and not have been brought forward to the triage desk area and be entered into the system," Wright said.

Maybe because he was homeless, probably didn't have an MSI card and therefore was told to sit down and someone would see him shortly?

Wright said the system relies on people approaching the triage desk so that they can be placed in a queue based on the urgency of their medical needs. He said Sinclair was known to hospital staff, and said staff was surprised Sinclair wouldn't have checked in at the triage desk.

Maybe that had to do with his medical condition which he came in to get checked..... I hardly doubt that.

I bet dimes to doughnuts that he was known to them, he's been in a few times in the past for minor things, and they just figured this was another minor case and just told him to sit down.

The chief medical examiner has determined the cause of death, but is still notifying family members. A critical incident review is now underway involving the Health Sciences Centre, its emergency department, and the WRHA.

Political fallout

The issue dominated question period at the Manitoba Legislature on Tuesday, as Progressive-Conservative Opposition Leader Hugh McFadyen demanded answers from Premier Gary Doer.

McFadyen accused the minister of knowing about the case when she held a news conference on Monday to announce a new contract with doctors.

"Thirty four hours, no attention, known to the minister at a time when she's out boasting about her record in health care. I want to ask the premier if he thinks it's appropriate that the Minister of Health was in front of the media yesterday, boasting in this house, boasting before this story broke, a story she was aware of, that she had overseen the worst emergency room failure in Manitoba history."

"We're treating this as a very, very serious situation," responded Doer. "We are investigating what went tragically wrong. And we admit to the people of Manitoba that it went tragically wrong."

Yeah you take it seriously now that someone died and your ass is in the sling.

Funny how no matter how much complaining and studies are done to prove and expose a problem, nothing ever is taken seriously until someone actually dies.

Victim had kicked addictions: friend

Friends of Brian Sinclair told CTV Winnipeg he was a former solvent abuser who had kicked his addictions.

"We haven't seen him in a year," said Joseph Severeight. "He quit using solvents and things like that. And that's how I knew him, he cleaned up his life."

Sinclair's brother, Bradley, said he didn't know his brother had gone to the emergency room and was told by social workers that Brian had died.

"I feel awful, but I'm going to pray for him," he said.

Even when other patients waiting in line repeatedly brought their concerns to officials, they were just brushed off, or said it would be too much paper work.......

A little bit of fk'n paper work at the expense of someone's life?

Yeah.... ok..... makes me sick.

Though I best not get too sick over this..... I might have to end up in the ER and die.

 

[tracy]

All the nurses and doctors were just stolling along, shooting the sh*t back and forth, laughing it up about what so-in-so did the other day..... so don't tell me about their fk'n priorities.

I hear this one a lot. You don't know why you weren't allowed in unless you can see in the entire ER which would be a GROSS violation of privacy laws. Nurses and docs sitting around in the ER are often waiting for things like Xrays, lab work, CT scans, MRIs or to transfer patients to regular floors in the hospital before they can let new patients in who are not really emergent. And, again, emergent means you will die in short order without medical care.

 

[faithlessforeve]

Here in Saint John NB, you can't just walk in to one of the two clinics , you have to call and make an appointment. After three days of a busy signal, I decided to walk down to my local clinic. They would not accept me or even make an appointment because I had to call. How disgusting is that?

 

[Zzarchov]

I don't go to a GP, I don't have one and haven't needed on. I've gotten sick, but unless its an emergency, I don't do anything about it.

Like Prax, I once broke a bone, my shoulder. The ER situation was agonizing and stupid, I could go on and rant for ages. In the end I went home and fixed it myself. Not perfect mind you, I still can't fully raise my one arm. But at the time I was poor and its not like I could have afforded private care either.

Boned either way. But I like having the option of emergency care, regardless of my current state of wealth.