MONCTON, New Brunswick — A Canadian woman wants to know why she was told to call for an ambulance when she was parked in front of the entrance to the emergency room of Moncton Hospital.
Candy Price drove her husband, Scott MacDonald, to the hospital on July 13. When they arrived, she was told she had to call 911 so paramedics could bring her husband into the hospital.
Wife forced to call 911 from outside hospital as husband screams in pain https://t.co/VWG3gfH6dC pic.twitter.com/Q7XfuZvKGI
— CBC News (@CBCNews) July 19, 2016
According to a surgeon who works at the hospital, there are no staff assigned to transfer people who are unable to walk into the hospital on their own.
When Price called 911, she said the dispatcher was in disbelief at her request.
“She said, ‘Where are you,’ and I said, ‘The city hospital...’ and she said, ‘Excuse me?’” Price said.
Price then spoke to paramedics and they asked the same question, “‘You’re where?’ And I repeated it again and when they got there they were upset looking.”
According to Price, one of the paramedics went inside and came out with the head nurse, who denied knowing what had unfolded.
"[The paramedic] said, ‘This is … ridiculous for us to be called when they’re right here at the emergency entrance,’” she said.
Dr. Serge Melanson, an emergency room physician and chief of staff at the Moncton Hospital, told CBC News that there are no staff members designated to the specific task of helping patients unable to walk into the hospital.
“We do not have portering staff to attend patients in our parking lot,” he said.
According to Melanson, that duty falls primarily on nurses, who are not specifically trained in how to extract patients from cars safely. If nurses do not feel they can safely remove a patient from a car, they are able to delegate that task to a paramedic.
“There’s no policy indicating to patients that they need to call 911 to be brought into the emergency department,” he said.
Price and MacDonald said this was not the end of their troubles.
Once they were inside the hospital, MacDonald claimed he was offered no help when he had to walk from the bed to an examination room. MacDonald said he was given a cocktail of painkillers by a doctor, who then told him he had suffered a severe muscle spasm.
MacDonald said he was told by a nurse to leave the room as he had been discharged. He told the nurse that his wife had left to get him clean clothes, but he says she responded that the room was needed for another patient.
Price said she was horrified when she returned to the hospital.
“When I pulled into emergency parking lot, I saw somebody wrapped around a pole in a hospital gown. I was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, why would they let anybody out of the hospital like that,’” Price said. “As I got closer I realized it was my husband.”
MacDonald was slurring his words and disoriented because of the painkillers, according to his wife.
Melanson said there are procedures in place to deal with a situation where someone is ready to be discharged but there is no one on hand to safely bring them home. He said discharged patients can wait in the emergency waiting rooms.
“We do not discharge patients out of the hospital until they have a loved one or a family member who can come to their aid,” he said.
Price and MacDonald have made a complaint to Horizon Health’s patient representative, who is investigating the matter.
Price also said she has no plans to pay the $130 ambulance fee.