North Van patient dies after two days stuck in waiting room of overcrowded, understaffed hospital
Staffing shortages have led to emergency room closures across B.C. And last week, a Lions Gate patient died after lying in the waiting room for two days.
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An older woman died last week after lying on a stretcher for at least two days in a North Vancouver hospital waiting room. It’s another sign, health-care workers say, of the growing staff-shortage in B.C.’s overcrowded emergency rooms.
Vancouver Coastal Health refused to directly confirm the July 11 death or provide any details, citing privacy laws, but said in an email Thursday it “is conducting a comprehensive review of the incident and will make recommended improvements as appropriate.”
Postmedia learned of the death on Monday, but Health Minister Adrian Dix declined all week to be interviewed for this story, instead directing questions to the health authority.
His ministry issued a statement that said, in part, “We realize there are deep anxieties at the moment with the news of emergency department diversions and busy waiting rooms.
“We want people to know that when they come to the hospital, they are safe, and that even during busy times, a standard triaging system is in place so that regardless of bed availability, patients are seen by a physician as soon as possible.”
However, both the Health Ministry and Vancouver Coastal Health publicly offered condolences to the patient’s family, thereby confirming there was a death at the hospital.
Last weekend, hospital ERs in Clearwater, Port McNeill, Port Hardy, Oliver and Ashcroft closed temporarily due to staffing shortages. Global News reported that an Ashcroft woman died of a heart attack on Sunday while her local ER was closed and the nearest ambulance was a half-hour away.
This was preceded by several ERs closing temporarily in the spring, and in June Squamish maternity patients being redirected to Metro Vancouver hospitals for several days.
It’s a crisis that is not limited to B.C., but is unfolding across Canada.
However, health officials here were tight-lipped this week about the North Vancouver case and, more broadly, what solutions are needed to address the staff shortages.
Postmedia spoke with four people who work at Lions Gate, who all requested anonymity, to piece together information about the woman’s death.
She was admitted on Saturday, July 9, for possible heart problems and put on a stretcher. There were no hospital beds available so she remained in a corner of the waiting room.
There was initially no indication that she needed to be put on a heart-monitoring machine, but in the mid-afternoon of July 11 she was found unresponsive — having never made it out of the overcrowded waiting room.
The voice of a veteran nurse at Lions Gate breaks and she pauses to control her emotions before explaining that nurses had between 12 and 17 patients to monitor as they laid in the waiting room on those days, along with triage duties. Her colleagues tried their best, she said, but needed more staff to provide these patients with proper care and to detect if they were starting to show symptoms of distress.
“Every single nurse, when they gave reports, said she’s really sweet,” the nurse said of the woman who died. “She’s with it, she’s understanding, she’s patient. Her daughter was here all the time. They’re lovely people. They weren’t getting angry at us. They understood. They were flexible. They were so lovely.”
The nurse asked that her name be protected so she does not get into trouble at work for speaking out.
There is no privacy for patients kept in the waiting room. This woman had the most private spot: She was tucked behind a blanket thrown over a shoulder-height partition that was erected to block COVID droplets.
A Code Blue — alerting staff to a life-threatening emergency — was called when nurses heard one of their colleagues yell for help and saw her doing CPR on the woman. The woman was rushed to a resuscitation room, where staff did everything they could to try to save her.
This type of death in the waiting room is unusual, the nurse said, but it’s unfortunately not the first time it has happened at Lions Gate. She blames a chronic staff shortage.
The patients can’t be moved from the waiting room until there is an appropriate bed for them in another ward of the hospital, but those beds are routinely full, the nurse said. She added that because the ER can’t turn patients away, the volumes there can just go “up and up and up and up.”
“I’m trying to triage somebody at the desk and I’m literally yelling at them over the volume of people and ambulances coming in,” she said.
“The moral distress of that waiting room, the list of things that you could not do, is gut wrenching.”
In response to detailed questions about this case, VCH would only say “this individual was assessed by a physician and received care from staff at Lions Gate,” but provided no specifics.
The statement also said that as the health system recovers from the impacts of the pandemic, staff are working hard “to meet the health care needs of local communities.”
B.C. Nurses’ Union president Aman Grewal said only VCH could release details of the incident, but she noted her members have raised concerns about it.
“We have heard from nurses at Lions Gate Hospital, talking about a morally distressing situation that took place there and saying that the emergency department there is in crisis,” she said. “They’re working short staffed, and that’s happening throughout B.C., throughout Canada, but they really felt the brunt of it last week.”
And it is a major problem in many urban hospitals, not just the rural ones, Grewal added.
“It’s not just isolated to Lions Gate. It’s happening with Royal Columbian. It’s happening at Eagle Ridge and Ridge Meadows. It’s happening everywhere, Surrey Memorial, Langley Memorial.”
Another Lions Gate nurse said that during that July 9-11 window, every wall of the emergency department waiting room was lined with stretchers.
“We are chronically understaffed. The (department) usually runs at least four to eight nurses short,” she said. “In the (department) that weekend … there were four (patients) that had been in the department for over 100 hours just waiting, waiting.”
On Monday, at an unrelated news conference, Health Minister Adrian Dix said persistent emergency room closures are a “significant problem.” He said the staffing shortages are largely caused by health care staff calling in sick, and insisted the province and health authorities are working to recruit and retain employees.
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