‘Please don’t let me die’: Calgary patients tell of long waits in emergency rooms
A woman says she spent seven hours in a Calgary emergency room consulting artificial intelligence for answers as she dealt with a potentially life-threatening condition related to diabetes.
Another woman says she had to undergo an emergency hysterectomy last year after bleeding for hours in the emergency room, two weeks after giving birth by C-section.
Dr. Paul Parks, an emergency room physician and chair-elect of the emergency medicine section of the Alberta Medical Association, said stories like this are “the tip of the iceberg.”
They come amid renewed scrutiny about the state of emergency wait times in the province following the death of a 44-year-old man in the emergency room at Edmonton’s Gray Nuns Community Hospital in December. Prashant Sreekumar’s family said he waited for nearly eight hours to see a doctor due to chest pain. The province has ordered a fatality investigation into his death.
Recently, emergency room doctors sent a list to the provincial government and health officials detailing six deaths and more than two dozen cases, where they alleged that delays in getting to the ER could worsen patients’ conditions or contribute to their deaths.
Whether it’s a family doctor or the emergency room, access to Alberta’s healthcare system has become an issue for many. As CBC’s Joe Horwood reports, amid stories of lasting harm and death in Alberta ERs, a non-partisan group is traveling the province to ask Albertans if the system works for them, and whether it’s time to demand change.
Park said there were initial signal This was probably going to be a tough flu season, and the problems started long before that.
“Our hospitals are at 110 percent capacity. We are struggling. We have been pleading for help for over a year.”
diabetic emergency
On January 8, Ashley Ronald, who has Type 1 diabetes, was taken by ambulance to Rockyview General Hospital. That morning she had experienced insulin pump failure, and her blood sugar was rising.
he told CBC Radio calgary iopener She arrived around 1 pm that day, where preliminary laboratory tests were conducted.
But she said it would take a few hours for more extensive testing to be done and that during that wait she was feeling nauseous And his pain was increasing.
She said, “I have never experienced anything like this in my life. I have given birth twice. It was the most incredible pain and it was completely preventable.”
In search of answers, he turned to ChatGPT. The AI chatbot told her that she probably had diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), which can be life-threatening, and that she needed to be on an IV.
She says she was put on an IV around 7 p.m. after telling the nurses she needed it.
About an hour after that, she says more tests were done that confirmed she was suffering from moderate to severe DKA.
calgary iopener11:01calgary emergency rooms status
We have more details on the situation at Calgary emergency rooms. A Calgarian told us about his hours-long wait in Rockyview.
Ronald says that the doctors and nurses who helped her were professionals and she does not blame them for her experience.
“It seems so clear that the system is broken,” he said.
“It has certainly diminished my confidence in our public health care being able to care for truly life-threatening emergencies for adults.”
emergency hysterectomy
Kelly Ruffin says that after months of dealing with the trauma of it all, she now feels able to share her experience.
The mother of three says she suffered postpartum hemorrhage last July, 15 days after her son was born by C-section. Ruffin, who has a background in health care, says she immediately knew what was happening.
When paramedics arrived, she says she felt no urgency from them, and says she questioned whether to turn on the ambulance sirens for the trip to Foothills Medical Center in Calgary.
“That was my first little instinct that I might get into a little trouble,” Raffin said.
She says she waited several hours to see a doctor, during which she realized something Blood spread down her back and legs as she was strapped to an ambulance stretcher.
She says she thought she was going to die.
While waiting, she was texting a friend who worked at ObustatrixWhich in turn alerted an obstetrician/gynecologist about her condition. That doctor came to examine him. She whispers to him, “Please don’t let me die,” and from there, things escalate rapidly.
She was taken to the trauma bay and ultimately had to undergo a life-saving hysterectomy after losing about 60 percent of her blood volume.
She says that if doctors had not come to help her, she does not think she would have survived.
“It bothers me a little bit,” she said. “Nobody should have to know someone who is going to help you when you’re in medical crisis.”
Parks said stories like Ruffin’s break her heart, and they can be distressing for the doctors and nurses involved.
“It’s a moral injury to show up every day and know that we can do better for these patients,” Parks said.
He said health care workers in the province provide high quality care; The problem is that patients do not get timely services.
Ruffin has nothing but praise for the doctors and nurses who helped her. But she says her experience highlights the system’s flaws.
“I’m a born-and-raised Calgarian, a born-and-raised Albertan, and we deserve to be safe in our health care system. And our health care system deserves to be supported so that they can help us,” Raffin said.
what is the state doing
In a statement to CBC News, a spokesperson for Hospitals and Surgical Health Services Minister Matt Jones said he was unable to comment on any specific cases due to patient confidentiality, but that the government is “very sorry to hear about any Albertan who experiences a serious medical event.”
“Long wait times in the emergency department remain a serious concern and we are seeing greater demand for the emergency department due to respiratory viruses,” said Kyle Warner.
“The pressures Alberta’s hospitals are facing are similar to those in other provinces.”
The province has added 336 temporary beds to meet the need during flu season, 206 of which are funded year-round, and 130 have been operational since October, the minister’s statement said.
The province will also launch a triage contact physician program in five emergency departments starting Feb. 1: two in Edmonton and three in Calgary.
The pilot program will see existing Alberta Health Services physicians assist triage nurses in diagnosing and beginning care of patients in waiting rooms.
speaking on his radio show Your province, your Prime Minister On Saturday, Premier Danielle Smith said there was still more work to do, adding that efforts to move long-term patients from hospitals to other facilities were helping to free up beds.
“We’re starting to see that emergency room treatment beds are becoming empty. There aren’t as many patients occupying them anymore,” Smith said.
Smith also said that a fatal investigation into Sreekumar’s death had been ordered, an indication that “something here did not go quite right.”
“I don’t want to prejudge what the outcome of this will be, but (the minister’s) initial view is that it needs to be looked at in depth,” Smith said. “And it’s a huge tragedy for that family.”
