Nurse checked Sinclair for bracelet, but not his vitals

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Brian Sinclair was looked at by an emergency room nurse hours after he arrived there with a blocked urinary catheter, but Health Sciences Centre nurse Robert Malo testified today that he didn’t check the vitals of the double amputee sitting in a wheelchair.

Malo said he was only checking to see if Sinclair had a hospital bracelet.

“I was matching charts to patients,” he said.

“(Sinclair) was sleeping… I looked at his wrists and I didn’t see any arm band.”

Malo admitted he believed Sinclair was in the emergency room for a non-medical reason, including waiting for a ride or looking for a safe place to sleep.

Malo said he didn’t know the man he checked was Sinclair until a fellow nurse told him the next day Sinclair had just been found dead in the emergency room.

Sinclair, 45, died on Sept. 21, 2008, after waiting in the Health Sciences Centre’s emergency waiting room for 34 hours.

A coroner has told the inquest that Sinclair could have died up to seven hours before he was discovered in the waiting room.

Sinclair had been sent to HSC by a doctor at a nearby clinic because of a suspected blocked urinary catheter.

Sinclair died of a treatable bladder infection.

Kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca