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Google PlayAfter waiting 16 hours to receive urgent medical attention, a man in his 70s died in front of a Quebec doctor. Now that doctor is speaking out against lengthy waiting times in hospital emergency rooms.
Dr. Sebastien Marin is an emergency room doctor at Barrie Memorial Hospital located in Ormstown, Quebec. He said the man suffered an aneurysm shortly after arriving at the hospital and subsequently died within minutes.
“Honestly, when we have a patient who walks in alive and just dies in front of us, it’s always frustrating when we can’t do anything,” Dr. Marin told CTV News. “But it’s even more frustrating when we know that the patient did the right thing. He tried to get care somewhere and he just didn’t get it.”
Dr. Marin took to Twitter to explain the ordeal. “Some people blame triage for the situation, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said. He then denounced poor working conditions.
In the hospitals in the region in which Dr. Marin works, Montérégie, six of the eight emergency rooms were over capacity. Barrie Memorial Hospital, where Marin works, was at 60% capacity, while others varied between 150% to 230%.
In his discussion with CTV News, Marin explained that patients with an emergency, especially treatable ones, can’t wait 16 hours to be seen by a doctor.
Marin added that the large amounts of patients in the emergency rooms can be traced back to them not having a family doctor and being forced to go to the emergency room to receive any form of treatment.
