Man’s treatment at Grace subject of critical incident probe

A St. François Xavier man’s hospital stay is being investigated as a critical incident after his esophageal leak went untreated for nearly 24 hours, resulting in pneumonia and an extended stay in the intensive care unit.

Last fall, Ernie Bright, 71, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. In the spring he went through treatment and surgery to remove his esophagus and create a new one. In early April, a few days after the procedure, he woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t catch his breath.

His wife, Isabel, called an ambulance and requested he be taken to Health Sciences Centre, where he’d had his surgery.

“And they said they couldn’t. They said they couldn’t take him to the Health Sciences Centre, he had to go to the Grace Hospital,” Isabel told the Free Press.

After waiting at the Grace for about 24 hours and being given medication by mouth — which went against Ernie’s post-operative treatment plan — a CT scan revealed he had a leak in his esophagus. He was rushed to HSC for surgery, but contracted pneumonia and ended up staying in the hospital for 40 days.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority confirmed it is investigating the matter as a critical incident.

“I’m just done, my husband has gone through enough,” Isabel said. “We assumed that the medical system would really help us if we got into trouble after (surgery), and the Grace truly let us down.”

Isabel said if Ernie had been seen sooner by a doctor, his pneumonia could have been avoided and he could have been spared a long hospital stay.

Ernie doesn’t remember much of his stay there, or being intubated after surgery at HSC.

“I must have been hallucinating or something, because I had some pretty wild dreams, and I had no idea what was going on,” he said. “I thought, ‘is this how you feel when you die?’”

Isabel said hospital staff at Grace were unhelpful when she asked why her husband hadn’t been seen by a doctor after waiting almost 20 hours in a bed, and questioned why he was being given medication orally despite a directive to the contrary on his file.

The WRHA patient safety team is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the event as a critical incident, spokeswoman Bobbi-Jo Stanley said in an email Friday.

The province defines a critical incident as an unintended event that occurs when health services provided to an individual results in serious or undesired consequences.

The province’s latest critical incident reports state there were 16 deaths and 43 major injuries between April 1 and Sept. 30, 2025.

Stanley said the health authority’s patient relations team has been in contact with the family, but the Brights said they haven’t heard from anyone about the case in weeks.

Isabel worries staff aren’t being trained properly to meet the needs of patients. After their hospital stay, she was told the request for first responders to go to HSC was refused because transport protocols dictate patients be taken to the nearest hospital.

“The ambulance should have been able to call a medical person and say, ‘OK, we’ve got this case, this is what it is, should we take him directly to the Health Sciences Centre?’” she said. “They should have just listened to us.”

In an emailed statement, Shared Heath said transport destination protocols are determined by matching medical needs with the nearest facility best equipped to treat the patient.

A doctor can request that a patient be treated at a specific site in advance via a signed authorization. In the absence of a signed note, paramedics are directed to transport the patient to the closest appropriate emergecy room.

An emailed statement attributed to Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said the department is letting the investigation unfold so the family “receives answers grounded in evidence and a clear understanding of what occurred.”

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca