Man from Winnipeg dies after 34 hours in ER without getting treatment

Another example of BULLSHIT CANADIAN MEDICARE

Well the first thing we could do is stop being so smug about how COMPASSIONATE we are and how much we CARE FOR THE SICK AND LESS FORTUNATE.

It is obvious we are no better than Americans.

quote:

---

The problem that we do not have enough doctors and nurses can only be solved by having more nurses and doctors not by second guessing and redesigning a system that works just fine as long as we have people to do the job.

---

Yes, and another consideration is that the guy may have died anyway.

Homeless/marginalized people are disproportionately heavy users of the health care system. The most fragile among the people I work with (addicts) see their doctor at least once every 2 weeks, some even once a week or more.

I would ask the average babbler: how often do you go to the dr?

For the most part, it's a myth that homeless/marginalized people are under-served by the health care system. I send my people to the ER all the time when they come in with massive cellulitis on their hands from skin popping, or gonorrhea of the eye (something I unfortunately have learned to recognize), that needs an injected antibiotic. Or sometimes I have to call an ambulance for someone who comes into the pharmacy who has ODed.

Where they are under-served is for funding such that they can afford to eat and be housed. And they are under-served for funding for programs to help them with their problems.

But if the dying homeless guy arrives on the doorstep of the ER, I say the system has already failed him. And it's not the health care system that's at fault.

I went with someone to emerge a couple of days ago. A guy in a wheelchair unable to hold his head up was just left sitting there with his head rolling around. How bad is that for the body?
Surely someone with an ounce of compassion would have some way to tilt the chair back to give him some comfort.
If I can see it on one random visit, what kind of morons are in charge of customer care in the hospitals?
One of my brothers was in a wheelchair and that brought him a lot of relief. Just tilting the chair back. Easy peasy and something that could be catered for in a bluddy hospital.
And ok they do not have beds. Well, why not better chairs in the waiting room? so if you are in pain you can lie down or lie back?
I think it is monsterous that people come to emergancy and have to sit for 4 to 6 hours.
Even the uncaring banks put more people on when there is more people waiting. Even the uncaring banks let people have a decent estimation of how long it will take before they will be seen.
Some of those people could go home and come back if the idiots allowed them to.
It is not just about not enough doctors and nurses it is also about having a very ingrained uncaring attitude to the public.
If ever there are concentration camps again, I know where they can recruit guards who are impervious to suffering.
Just my take on it.

quote:

---

Originally posted by helpistwosided:
[b]A Winnipeg man waited 34 hours in an emergency room this weekend, but died without getting treatment.

Sources tell CTV News he was homeless.

Last Friday at 3:00 p.m., the man walked into the emergency room at the Health Sciences Centre seeking treatment.

At 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning, staff found the man unconscious.

He was pronounced dead a short time later, after they tried to resuscitate him.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) won't release the man's name and they won't say what he came in for.

Unconfirmed reports also claim the man may have been dead for several hours before he was noticed by staff.

Those allegations will now be part of the review looking into the matter.

A critical incident review is underway involving the Health Sciences Centre, its emergency department, and the WRHA.

"It's a concern when something like that happens," WRHA spokesperson Heidi Graham told CTV News. "We want to review and find out, not pre-judge, what happened during those hours. But we are going to get to the bottom and find out what happened."

The WRHA wouldn't go any further, saying just that the review will identify what went wrong, and make recommendations of how things should be changed to prevent this from happening again.

But the Manitoba's Conservative health critic says there's no way it should have happened at all.

"I find this unbelievable. This is a horrible failure of our health care system," Myrna Driedger said. "We have been harping on the NDP government for many many years now, that we have a crisis in our ERs. We have been told numerous times by this government and by this premier that they are fixing it. This is not a fix of our health care system when a person dies in a waiting room."

[ 23 September 2008: Message edited by: helpistwosided ][/b]

---

Again, during those 34 hours-- what was going on in the hospital? How many critical care people came in by ambulance? How many nurses were there? How long had they been working (in some provinces we have nurses FREQUENTLY working 24 hours straight (2 back to back 12 hour shifts) because there is no relief coming in. We are so far over capacity with dangerous nurse-patient ratios that I can see that there would never have been a moment for the nurses to leave the triage area and look for someone who had never checked in with them.

This is an unusual case-- the person came in on foot and never walked over to triage. People get to triage either on their own or are brought there-- it is unbelievably strange that someone would arrive at the ER on their own and not walk up to the nurses' station and check in but this is what happened. It is entirely believable that the staff of the hospital were unable to inspect their waiting rooms for people that had not checked in.

I find the suggestion that overworked staff at hospitals who go into a profession of caring are being compared to prison guards when they are warning the government, the employer and the public that we have a crisis in the shortage of nurses. And this crisis goes back to the short-sighted cuts of the 1990s by mostly right-wing governments trying to save a few bucks in order to fund tax cuts.

quote:

---

A homeless person died while awaiting care at an emergency ward and all he can do is bad mouth the Canadian system. Shame on you and thanks Sineed for a rationale explanation of the problems facing many in our society today.

---

Maybe he felt the problem was that people were surprised by this death and actually cared; if we switched to the US healthcare system this sort of thing would be so common it would never make the news.

I agree that this shows our health system is under resourced; no big surprise as successive governments have worked hard to make this the case so as to discredit the system.

That ER at the Health Sciences Centre (HSC) can be a pretty scary place. The last time I was there was on a Saturday night, a number of years ago, and I was seeking treatment after getting my hand slammed inside a window frame. It took so long to get treatment - there were a lot of people in much worse condition than me - that my finger swelled up and there was nothing the doctors could do. I was lucky that the fingernail later came out in one piece and grew back cleanly.

My most recent experience in an ER (at another location in Winnipeg) involved a 4-5 hour wait to get my eyes examined for an infection and some drops. I already knew how long the wait would be so I brought a book. They seemed to be well organized enough to prioritize the patients but the waiting area was large and I could see the possibility of the staff overlooking someone who just sat in a corner and said nothing.

What a Kafka-esque death! Like dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean.

As for the comments from the Conservative Health critic ... her remarks barely merit a mention. The NDP successfully thumped the Conservatives on the latter's barbaric "hallway medicine" and other practices in recent elections. Health care is probably the number one reason the Conservatives are the opposition, and not the Government, in Manitoba. And they know it.

Do you have walk-in clinics in Manitoba? Here in Ontario, when people would come into the pharmacy with, say, a nasty eye infection, I would send them to a walk-in clinic rather than the ER, where they'd face the multi-hour wait.

The case is tragic. On the CBC, they were saying the guy lost his legs to frostbite and was in a wheelchair. His primary care physician sent him to the ER by taxi when he developed a urinary tract infection from his catheter.

Frostbite damage is common among the homeless. I've seen guys in Toronto missing their toes.

quote:

---

Sineed: Do you have walk-in clinics in Manitoba?

---

Of course. For whatever reason, when I got my eyes looked at and picked up some drops (It was serious and driving me nuts; I had a bad eye infection and it was like poison ivy in the eye. Very annoying.) I went to a place other than an official "ER". The line-ups are still long. I think the walk-in clinics near me were closed at the end of my work day and I had little choice, or something like that.

When the really cold weather arrives in Winnipeg, the Main Street Project drives around town and picks up those people, for example, sleeping in alleys that would be dead in the morning if they were left alone. Yes, even at -40 C there are homeless.