Key takeaways:
- The patient was triaged, but his illness was considered not a preference for the ER.
- Regional paramedics tell the demise of an older man outside the Trois-Rivières hospital is a case they’d been worrying about.
- They say long lineups outside the emergency unit are becoming more and more familiar.
A male’s demise outside the hospital after waiting for long:
The ambulance service in Trois-Rivières, Que. is ringing the alarm after an older man died in a hospital’s garage this week, after staying almost two hours for a cure.
It’s a case paramedics in the Mauricie area had been worrying, telling long backlogs at the hospital’s emergency division are becoming increasingly standard.
According to Richard Fournier, the vice president of the ambulance association in the Mauricie (CAM), paramedics picked up the man. They took him to the Centre Hospitalier affilié universitaire régional (CHAUR).
When they reached, he stated there were already five or six other ambulances staying in the garage.
Fournier stated the patient was triaged by a nurse who determined his illness was not a preference, and he was moved to stay in the ambulance.
Also read: Quebec intends to raise most pandemic constraints by mid-March
“What we’re seeing right now is that it’s not a one-off case; it’s recurrent,” he stated of the backlog. Source – cbc.ca
After almost two hours, Fournier told the patient went into cardiac arrest. He stated paramedics did everything they could to restore him and said the hospital, but the man died in the ambulance.
“If the hospital had been able to take consideration of him, to take him to visit a doctor faster… well, the patient would likely still be alive today,” stated Fournier. Source – cbc.ca
Health board to investigate
The previous week, the CAM ambulance union was accused of long wait times at the Trois-Rivières hospital, stating that up to nine ambulances could be noticed staying outside the CHAUR at once in recent weeks.
