’He was the smartest person I know’

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This article was published 10/01/2025 (287 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The family of a 49-year-old man who died in the Health Sciences Centre emergency department waiting room — eight hours after arriving by ambulance — is seeking answers and wondering whether his death Tuesday could have been prevented.

Chad Giffin’s family wants to know how he died and whether he was reassessed between the time he was admitted as a low-acuity patient and the moment staff noticed his condition had significantly worsened.

“We would like to know if there was someone going around to the patients… asking how they were, if anything progressed,” Giffin’s sister, Ronalee Reynolds, told the Free Press Friday. “We would like to know if there was any followup with him after he was admitted.

“We are just wondering if he was checked in on, and if something could have been avoided.”

Shared Health, which runs HSC, is carrying out a critical incident investigation into Giffin’s death. His family said he had a mental illness and struggled with drug addiction and homelessness in his adult life.

“We would want people to remember him being as brilliant as he was,” Reynolds said, noting her brother built computer programs when he was 12 and won a junior high science fair for building a motion-sensor alarm system.

“He was the smartest person I know. People need to know he is loved. He is missed. We just really appreciate that he’s not suffering anymore. We’re happy that he is at peace, wherever he is.”

On Tuesday, Dr. Shawn Young, HSC chief operating officer, told reporters the patient arrived by ambulance shortly after midnight that morning.

Young said the man was assessed, triaged as low acuity, or less urgent, and directed to the waiting room with instructions to speak to staff if his condition changed or worsened.

Staff noticed his condition had deteriorated shortly after 8 a.m., and he was pronounced dead in a resuscitation room a short time later, Young said.

Officials have not said how many times the man was reassessed by staff. Young told reporters low-acuity patients, who can face waits of more than 10 hours, are typically reassessed every couple of hours.

The ER was over-capacity, with about 100 patients and 50 of them in the waiting room, including Giffin.

Young said the number of nurses on shift was just below the baseline, and a backlog prevented admitted ER patients from being moved to a bed.

Giffin’s death raised comparisons to the tragic end of Brian Sinclair’s life in 2008. Sinclair, a 45-year-old Indigenous man and double-amputee who used a wheelchair, died in the same waiting room 34 hours after he arrived seeking care for a blocked urinary catheter.

“People need to know he is loved. He is missed. We just really appreciate that he’s not suffering anymore.”–Sister Ronalee Reynolds

An inquest judge concluded the acute peritonitis that caused Sinclair’s death was avoidable, and he died because he did not receive the initial treatment he required.

Reynolds said Shared Health confirmed to her family on Friday that her brother was the man who died in the ER.

Giffin had a public trustee because he was vulnerable, and he had told the trustee he had no next of kin, his sister said.

Their mother spoke to Young and a patient relations manager.

“They don’t know what happened. That’s basically why they’re doing this, rather than a basic investigation, they’re doing the critical incident investigation,” Reynolds said.

She said officials told her family that her brother was out in the cold near Main Street and Henry Avenue downtown.

Someone was concerned about him and called 911, she said.

Paramedics spoke to Giffin and took him to the ER, Reynolds said.

The exact reason he needed care wasn’t explained to his family, she said.

While Giffin’s relatives await more details about what happened, Reynolds said she hopes the investigation identifies whether any changes are necessary to ensure ER patients’ conditions are regularly reassessed while they wait hours for care.

She said her family understands the crises that exist in the health-care system, and they do not place blame on front-line employees.

“We are fully aware of the staff shortages everywhere, especially in health care. We are not putting any fault on the doctors or nurses.”–Sister Ronalee Reynolds

“We are fully aware of the staff shortages everywhere, especially in health care,” she said. “We are not putting any fault on the doctors or nurses.”

She doesn’t know whether her brother was homeless at the time of his death. He had been previously, she said.

Reynolds hopes people look beyond the circumstances that made Giffin vulnerable.

“He was family. I just hope people know that he was more than how he ended,” she said.

Reynolds last had contact with Giffin about a decade ago as he estranged himself from his family. He grew up in Portage la Prairie and spent some time in Eastern Canada before returning to Manitoba.

Shared Health said the critical incident investigation will look at all potentially contributing factors to the death.

A similar investigation was conducted in 2023, after a man died while waiting for care in the ER hallway.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca