ER problems can be solved: former medical examiner

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/08/2016 (3318 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s former chief medical examiner says racism didn’t play a role in Brian Sinclair’s death, but doesn’t deny seeing it in other cases during his decades-long career.

Dr. Thambirajah Balachandra retired at the end of June after almost two decades as the province’s chief pathologist. In a wide-ranging interview with the Free Press Monday, he commented on several high-profile cases he handled.

He was the man who ordered an inquest into the death of 45-year-old double-amputee Sinclair, who died after waiting 34 hours at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre’s emergency room without treatment. The case drew national attention as Sinclair’s family and advocates accused hospital staff of racially stereotyping the indigenous man as drunk or homeless rather than a man in need of medical care.

Balachandra says it wasn’t racism that led to Sinclair being ignored; it was a symptom of an overcrowded emergency room, with overworked triage nurses.

“No,” he stated immediately when asked if racism played a role in Sinclair’s death. “In that particular situation, no.”

While an inquest into Sinclair’s death produced a 200-page report, Balachandra argued the inquest did not go far enough to give more creative solutions to Manitoba’s emergency room problems.

It was a chaotic situation where there were triage nurses trying to assess patients, while communicating with doctors — and the inevitable outcome of that chaos was someone such as Sinclair getting lost in the shuffle.

One solution he has long fought for is a separation between the critical- and minor-treatment areas within an emergency room.

This would allow for either a family doctor or nurse practitioner to treat patients who come in with cuts or minor injuries, freeing the emergency-trained physicians to treat patients with critical needs. Using statistics on when patients come in and to which hospitals, officials can know when emergency rooms are most busy and will need more staff.

“You can cater to them (the patients), based on the statistics we have already. We have extensive statistics about when patients come, what kind of patients come,” he said.

In the wake of Sinclair’s death, Balachandra did not hesitate calling for an inquest, which is a court hearing to examine the facts surrounding a death. Such hearings are typically called in Manitoba when someone dies at the hands of police, in custody or when under the care of the provincial government.

“Calling an inquest was easy, because you have to call it. It was not the first time someone died in an emergency room. The decision was easy, within day two or three days of his death, we knew it was going to an inquest,” he said.

“Staying in the emergency room for 34 hours is a long, long time, especially in a busy place like that when people are in and out… how did we miss him?”

After being at the helm since 1998, much of Balachandra’s career has been spent among dead bodies, skulls and discovered remains. The chief examiner is also responsible for investigating all unexpected and violent deaths in the province.

There is one body part he has never forgotten — a thigh belonging to 16-year-old Felicia Solomon found in the Red River in 2003, three months after the teen disappeared from her inner-city home.

One year earlier, 18-year-old Erin Chorney disappeared in Brandon, last seen by her boyfriend, Michael Bridges.

Balachandra helped identify both bodies. It was Balachandra who investigated the thigh found near the Alexander Docks and determined Solomon had been slain.

“I was called to the scene at the Alexander Docks and said this is a human thigh and this is a homicide, because it had been cut,” he said. “From there an arm surfaced and we checked it out and I positively identified her… we knew exactly where she was and who she was. But still the police have not done anything… compared to what they did with the Chorney case.”

It was during an elaborate Mr. Big sting operation organized by the RCMP in 2004, Balachandra wound up in a Brandon cemetery at midnight, digging up a grave after Bridges confessed he had buried Chorney on top of a stranger’s grave.

“They didn’t want anyone to know they were doing this, so we (Balachandra and Brandon police) went at midnight to the cemetery because they didn’t want to disturb the public, but they wanted to know if it was true. It was January and the ground was frozen and we started drilling,” he said. “I stuck my hand in it and felt a leg and I said, ‘Yes, there is a human body there.’”

While Bridges was convicted in June 2005 of first-degree murder following a jury trial, Solomon’s killer remains at large.

“Is it racism? She (Chorney) was white and Solomon was native,” he said, adding Solomon originally came from Norway House in northern Manitoba. “I think they could have solved it. Why didn’t they do a sting operation for this? This girl, I feel sorry for her still today.”

— with files from Aidan Geary

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca