I read the article “Ribbon cut on new floors at hospital” on the grand opening of the two Vernon Jubilee Hospital floors that took place Feb. 26 and rejoiced with the rest of Vernon and all of the North Okanagan that the top two hospital floors were finally operational and available to patients.
What the jubilant celebrants probably didn’t know when they were cutting the ribbon is that one of those patients waiting to be moved to the sixth floor on Jan. 31, was, instead, moved to the hospital morgue in the basement that very day, following a series of mishaps that had occurred in the emergency room two days earlier.
On the evening of Jan. 29, an acutely ill patient was left in the ER without being seen by a single doctor for 15 hours.
In the entire hospital, let alone the ER, where the patient was physically present, there was no physician willing to attend to the patient, who was in need of urgent medical care. Were they extremely busy, you may ask? No. The ER was quiet that night. There were four vacant rooms on the floor.
The patient’s family members, also present in the ER at the time, repeatedly requested the presence of a physician. Their request was denied by the nurses citing hospital protocol. The only doctor the patient was allowed to deal with that night was at home.
The patient eventually died. He was my father. He was unlucky to be in ER room 16.
The nurses later explained to me that hospital protocol prescribed that the patients in ER rooms one to 14 were to be attended to by a hospital physician, while those in ER rooms 15 to 22 were not. Had I known that fact, I would have dialed 911 from ER room 16 and asked the paramedics to move my father from room 16 to any of the four vacant ER rooms one to 14 in order to save his life. A doctor never came to my father’s bedside until the irreversible damage had occurred, and when the doctor did come in to see my father 15 hours later, it was too late. From that point on, it was just a matter of time before my father took his last breath.
My father continued to live and to breathe for 42 hours. Nothing could be done any longer to save his life. Our family, that included my disabled and partially paralyzed mother, spent the entire time with my dear dad, first in the ER and then in the intensive care unit. My brother, who had spent 10.5 hours on the plane rushing to his dying father’s side, missed saying good-bye to dad by 30 minutes. Our dad’s heart stopped beating the very minute the plane landed at the Kelowna airport. Our father passed away as they were moving the patients from his unit to the brand new sixth floor. He was supposed to be one of the them.
Good on the patients who lived to enjoy the new hospital beds. May they have a safe and speedy recovery. Shame on the hospital administrators who write and enforce senseless protocols that trump the needs of patients.
After I said goodbye to my deceased father in the hospital, I came home and found a letter in the mail. It was from the Vernon Jubilee Hospital Foundation thanking me for the donation I had made a month earlier in my father’s honour. You are welcome.
Irena Neibuhr
Coldstream
