Lions Gate ER patient who died got ‘significant care’: health minister

Article content material

A lady who quietly after mendacity on a stretcher for 2 days within the Lions Gate emergency ready room obtained “vital care” from medical employees the day of her loss of life, regardless of the hospital being too full to maneuver her to a correct mattress, Well being Minister Adrian Dix says.

Article content material

“It’s terrible when anyone dies in these circumstances,” Dix stated Tuesday in his first public feedback concerning the fatality. “It’s terrible for the household, to begin with, and for the caregivers, second of all. And it’s completely official to ask questions on care.”

However Dix stated he disagreed with recommendations from some that “nothing” was accomplished to assist this affected person.

“They have been certainly in an ER ready room, however they have been getting care in that ready room from diagnostic (imaging), blood work, a number of medical doctors, specialists medical doctors. … This was the care that was offered. Whether or not that care was sufficient or not is, after all, one thing that we must always all the time overview.”

The aged girl, whose title has not been made public, entered the overcrowded and understaffed North Vancouver hospital on the weekend of July 9 and 10, however was left within the ready room on a stretcher as a result of there have been no accessible beds. A relative got here to test on her on the afternoon of Monday, July 11, and located her nonetheless on the stretcher however unresponsive.

Article content material

The case, first reported final week by Postmedia, is one other instance of B.C.’s ailing major care system which has seen a number of rural emergency rooms shut on busy weekends. Dix stated the scarcity of medical employees has been exacerbated by an growing variety of individuals off sick as a result of COVID.

“What’s completely true is that affected person volumes are excessive within the health-care system proper now, above what we’d usually see, and that places stress on us,” Dix, who was not made accessible to talk with Postmedia final week about this case, stated on Monday.

“If you’re going through, as we’re, each very vital absences within the health-care system and actual challenges when it comes to elevated demand -— and this was one of many busiest weekends (Lions Gate) hospital had ever skilled — then it’s tough. And am I involved? Daily.”

Article content material

Distraught Lions Gate workers have stated the lady was admitted with cardiac issues, and that nurses and medical doctors did their finest to test on her however couldn’t present the kind of monitoring she would obtain on a ward.

Whereas Dix is proscribed in what he can say due to affected person privateness legal guidelines, he stated the affected person was formally admitted a day after exhibiting up on the ER, on July 10, and that medical employees did a wonderful job regardless of the actual fact it will have been extra “fascinating” for her to be in a mattress on a ward. The affected person was steady all day on July 10, he added.

“Subsequently within the afternoon of the eleventh, the affected person was unresponsive and emergency efforts for resuscitations have been put in place when the affected person handed away. Provided that it was members of the family that discovered them in that state, that provides to the shock and the disappointment of it,” he stated.

Article content material

Vancouver Coastal Well being representatives met with the lady’s household on Friday, and are investigating her loss of life — a report that Dix hopes is accomplished by mid-August. The household may request a affected person care high quality overview, which Dix stated is impartial of the well being authority.

It’s not clear what the general public might be taught from the well being authority overview. Postmedia requested Inside Well being for the outcomes of its overview into the same incident final yr, wherein a affected person died within the ER ready room in Kamloops, nevertheless it stated it was prohibited from offering any findings or suggestions to guard the data from heath-care staff.

“When an incident like this occurs, Inside Well being does every thing attainable to be taught from it, so conditions like this don’t occur once more,” was the one data offered.

Article content material

Vancouver Coastal Well being has ordered some adjustments at Lions Gate since this affected person died, comparable to making an attempt to scale back the variety of individuals within the ready room, B.C. Nurses’ Union vice-president Adriane Gear stated.

However as a result of the hospital continues to be full, these diverted sufferers will nonetheless be in stretchers however now within the hallways of wards, that are additionally understaffed, she added.

“It’s a shell recreation. That’s how nurses see it. This isn’t an answer for the long run,” she stated.

And Gear was not singling out Lions Gate, saying one of these understaffing and overcrowding “might be virtually any hospital on any given day.”

Dix, although, argued the NDP is working onerous to enhance the well being care system, by constructing new hospitals and including 30,000 new well being care staff within the final two years.

The problem, he added, is a scarcity of employees as a result of COVID. However that’s of little consolation to the household of the affected person who died at Lions Gate.

“For this particular person, and for his or her household, it’s simply disappointment and grief. And I would like you to know, I perceive that.”

lculbert@postmedia.com