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Article content“Our hallways and waiting rooms have become death zones and we wonder how many ‘ticking time bombs’ will drop dead when they should be receiving life-saving care in a functional emergency care space,” the physician wrote.Article contentIn another case, a patient who arrived at the emergency department with septic and renal failure was awaiting a general internal medicine assessment, but due to overcrowding and the service cap, the patient was in the emergency department for 24 hours. The patient’s condition deteriorated and they died.Article contentA physician reported there were multiple emergency department handovers before the patient received a consult.Article contentAccording to the document, delays and overcrowding directly contributed to the deaths of the patients in each of the six cases.Article contentParks said these cases are just the tip of the iceberg.Article content“The waiting room has metastasized into many different areas and we are routinely seeing very bad outcomes in these areas because of prolonged waits,” Parks said.Article content“Those words (from) our colleagues represent what a lot of us feel when we go into an emergency department that is so severely overcrowded and unsafe that we do really worry about all those patients that are spread across our waiting room and our hallways.”Article contentArticle contentMore than 30 critical “near misses”Article contentThe second section of the six page document listed more than 30 cases of “critical near misses” where patients nearly died or were in a dire situation. Three patients were admitted to the intensive care unit and physicians said they are unsure whether or not those patients will survive.Article contentSeveral cases described prolonged long-wait times before being seen, lack of privacy in some cases and illnesses that quickly deteriorated and could have resulted in death if physicians had not intervened in time.Article contentIn one case, a paraplegic patient arrived with catheter complications and autonomic dysreflexia — a potentially life-threatening condition which causes sudden high blood pressure for those with a spinal cord injury. She was on a stretcher in the hallway for upwards of 11 hours. Approximately 14 hours later, staff informed her the interventional radiology room wasn’t functioning due to staffing and she was sent home.Article contentAnother patient was resuscitated in the hallway — the physician wrote there was no other space available.Article contentIn a third case, a man in his 20s came in with shortness of breath and waited more than seven hours before being seen. He ended up in septic shock and was intubated in the ICU. It is uncertain whether or not he will survive.Article contentArticle contentDr. Warren Thirsk, the head of emergency medicine for the AMA and an emergency room physician at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, said the health care system is already at a point where it’s unsafe for patients. He said the system crossed that threshold 20 years ago and the situation has only worsened.Article content“What happens is there is an attempt to pin the systemic problems throughout the entire health care system on transient events like a flu coming through town,” Thirsk said.Article content“The problem is not the flu. The problem is chronic fiscal constraint and failure to account for growth and infrastructure needs.”Article contentThirsk said the call to declare a state of emergency is a call to acknowledge the large issues burdening the health care system in order to find meaningful ways to address them.Article contentHe worries that in five years from now waiting rooms will see even longer wait times, which will be accepted since “we’ve normalized abnormal.”Article contentAlberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said the United Conservative Party (UCP) needs to do more and listen to issues health care professionals on the ground are raising when it comes to the situation in hospitals and emergency rooms.

Article content“ERs are operating at over 100 per cent capacity, and some rural communities are seeing them closed altogether. Patients have died while waiting for care, yet the UCP government still won’t admit we’re in a crisis,” Nenshi said.Article contentArticle contentArticle contentArticle contentBookmark our website and support our journalism:Article content Don’t miss the news you need to know — add EdmontonJournal.com and EdmontonSun.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.Article contentYou can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal | The Edmonton Sun.Article content

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