Couple demands answers after ER ordeal

HALIFAX — Nearly five hours had gone by, and he could not wait another minute for the ambulance to arrive.

He lay in bed clutching the sheets, moaning. Even the slightest movement ratcheted the burning, stabbing pain. It started in his back and spread below his waist. His legs went numb. His fever and blood pressure were rising.

His wife was on the phone with a 911 operator for the third time in four and a half hours. The operator told her she didn’t know when the ambulance would arrive at their Purcells Cove home.

He hit his breaking point and screamed out to his wife to cancel the ambulance and get him to the hospital right away. She had no other choice but to load her husband into their car and drive him to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital emergency department in Halifax.

The couple has asked that we not publish their names because they run a small company and are worried about potential backlash.

They say what they went through is inexcusable and that they must speak out about their ordeal with this province’s health-care system. We’ll call the couple Jane and John.

In the end, it took 10 hours for John to get what he needed: four milligrams of the painkiller Dilaudid.

'THEY DESERVE RESPECT'

Three days after their experience, Jane sent a four-page letter to Premier Tim Houston and Health Minister Michelle Thompson describing what the couple went through. They wanted assurance that other Nova Scotians would be spared a similar ordeal.

“The people of Nova Scotia deserve more,” Jane wrote. “They deserve respect, and they deserve to know that when they are ill, they will be taken care of with dignity and with the proper support.”

Jane and John arrived at the Halifax emergency department just after 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning. John was in extreme pain and unable to move. So Jane ran into the emergency department looking for help. She first encountered an employee standing just inside the hospital entrance. He told her that her husband needed to walk in on his own in order to be admitted. There were no wheelchairs available inside the emergency department.

“I asked if someone could assist me to walk him in — I would try that — I was told, no, it was a liability issue,” recalled Jane.

The man went to the triage desk for advice about what to do next. He told her to call an ambulance and paramedics could bring her husband in the hospital. She told him that she had called for an ambulance five hours ago and one never came. Three days prior John had been at the same hospital for a serious back operation. For years he’d been dealing with chronic pain.

Jane panicked and ran back to her car where he husband was waiting, writhing in pain. She didn’t know what to do. Luckily a security guard did. He saw Jane dash into the emergency room entrance and get turned away. He went searching for a wheelchair and found one. He rushed out to the parking lot and helped load John into the wheelchair.

“I can’t say enough about the security guard," recalled Jane. "He’s not even part of the health-care team. He took it upon himself to help me because he knew I was in distress.”

The couple had another obstacle before getting inside the emergency waiting room. They had to answer a series of standard COVID-19-related questions. Both of them were required to rub their hands with hand sanitizer. John couldn’t move so his wife sanitized his hands.

The couple was then ushered into a hallway where patients are offloaded by paramedics.

It was a desperate scene, recalled the couple. They counted 20 paramedics and a half-dozen police officers attending to various patients. They noticed two elderly people laid out on stretchers waiting to be seen by a doctor. Another man and woman seemed to be heavily intoxicated and screaming. A team of police officers and paramedics watched over them. There were no beds available for John and everyone else.

STILL IN PAIN

Eventually, someone from triage became concerned about John’s deteriorating condition. He eventually found a bed for John.

“He was really concerned about John,” Jane recalled. "He kept pacing the hallway and calling this number but no one was answering.”

"We’re waiting in the hallway and we felt we’re in a movie. It was so surreal. One man was losing his mind. Another woman was screaming her head off at the end of the hallway. Meanwhile, you had these two sick elderly people that needed to see a doctor but couldn’t."

They were eventually given a bed that had no pillows, Jane said. John was still in extreme pain and needed to elevate his legs. His wife ended up putting her purse under them.

A doctor arrived in the room at 5 a.m., more than eight hours after Jane made her first call for an ambulance. But the doctor did little for John. Because he was in so much pain she couldn’t properly examine him.

“My husband was in so much pain that he didn’t remember her coming into the room. She proceeded to tell us that she had to call a surgeon.

"She left, no offer of any other services or pain medication, and she didn’t ask if we had questions. We still had not seen a nurse either at this point."

More than an hour passed before a resident specialist showed up. The doctor assured the couple that John’s condition was normal given that he had just gone through intrusive surgery. He also asked if John was given anything for pain. A nurse finally arrived to administer four milligrams of Dilaudid. Within an hour John was feeling better and was sent home with a prescription to manage the pain.

Besides addressing her letter to the premier and health minister, Jane also copied the document to the president and CEO of the QEII Foundation and Emergency Health Services. On the same day, she emailed the letter she got a call from the hospital's emergency department clinical manager. She was told that the department was shortstaffed that Sunday morning. They were operating at the minimum number of nurses. The emergency department had 13 registered nurses working early last Sunday morning, five less than the number that is supposed to be staffed.

They were also short on doctors, too. Plus, she was told that the ER saw far more patients than a typical early Sunday morning.

SaltWire Network reached out to Thompson to find out what went wrong Sunday morning. We asked why there weren’t enough hospital beds available at the time and whether there were enough doctors and nurses on duty. We also asked whether enough paramedics were staffed in the Halifax region last Saturday night and early Sunday morning. But those questions were not answered. Thompson issued a written statement apologizing for the couple’s experience.

“Nova Scotians deserve the care they need, when and where they need it,” she stated. “While our health-care system is strained, we are working hard to make meaningful change to prevent these types of experiences.”

EXTREMELY BUSY

Charbel Daniel, executive director of EHS provincial operations, issued a similar statement, saying: "We are deeply concerned to hear about the experience the couple shared and understand how stressful these situations can be."

He said the ambulance system was extremely busy last Saturday night across Nova Scotia, including in the Halifax area.

Daniel said an operational review of the case is underway.

Kevin MacMullin, business manager for the union representing paramedics (International Union of Operating Engineers Local 727), said that the province’s ambulance system is understaffed and overwhelmed.

He said there’s a shortage of 200 to 300 paramedics in the province, and many of those vacancies are in Halifax Regional Municipality. On top of that, about 250 are on leave for medical and other reasons.

There’s a serious shortage of paramedics, he said. One of the main reasons for this is pay. Nova Scotia paramedics make between $55,000 to $83,000 a year, roughly $10,000 less than other provinces.