PROVINCIAL health officials are investigating a “potential critical incident,” after an emergency room patient died overnight Monday while waiting for treatment in a hallway at Health Sciences Centre.

The death at the downtown Winnipeg hospital is under investigation, Shared Health confirmed Tuesday, refusing to provide any additional details.

“While privacy legislation prevents us from speaking to specifics of a patient case, we are able to confirm that we are investigating a potential critical incident that occurred during a one-hour window on Feb. 27 in the HSC Winnipeg emergency department. An initial review of the circumstances surrounding this event is underway,” a Shared Health spokesperson stated in response to a Free Press inquiry.

The Manitoba Nurses Union said it was able to confirm the discovery of a dead patient in the EMS hallway at HSC’s emergency department. The man needed to be admitted but all staffed beds were full, the MNU said.

Hospital staff have been using that hallway to make space for patients who can’t be seated in the waiting room, and they’ve repeatedly raised concerns to the union and to their employer about the unsafe situation overcrowding creates, MNU president Darlene Jackson said Tuesday.

“A lot of these areas are not in a place where you can keep your eyes on patients all the time,” she said.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Head Start

Weekday Mornings

A quick glance at the news for the upcoming day.

Sign up for Head Start

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

There aren’t enough nurses to open more beds, Jackson said — stressing nurses don’t want the public to believe they’re not caring for patients.

“The bottom line is that department is, at times, chaotic; there’s more patients than there are places to put them,” she said. “The nurses are working as hard as they can in a terrible situation.”

HSC nurses who spoke on the condition of anonymity indicated they’ve long-worried patients would die because of the situation. They said patients are lined up in the hallway and there isn’t enough staff to properly monitor them.

“This has been our biggest fear for some time,” one HSC nurse said. “Someone dying in the waiting room or EMS hallway on our watch because we are not adequately supported.”

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com

Katie May
Reporter

Katie May is a general-assignment reporter for the Free Press.

   Read full biography