Urgences Santé revising way it responds to calls
Move comes after Roxboro man waited in pain for 9 hours until ambulance came
Urgences Santé will revise its emergency protocols to take into account how long some people have to wait for an ambulance after a Roxboro man in excruciating pain languished at home for nine hours before he was transported to hospital.
The president and executive director of Urgences Santé paid a personal visit to Trevor Garland at St. Mary’s Hospital on Wednesday to apologize for his lengthy wait.
Garland, who is 66, dislocated his right hip and had to undergo emergency surgery last week. Since then, he has developed neurological complications — including slurred speech and weakness in his left arm — that he says arose partially as a result of the traumatic experience of having waited so long in agony for an ambulance on Oct. 17.
“What happened was unacceptable,” Urgences Santé spokesperson Stéphane Smith told the Montreal Gazette. “There’s no way to explain this away. We can’t stick our heads in the sand.”
Nicola D’Ulisse, Urgences Santé’s executive director, vowed to accelerate the ambulance service’s response times in cases where some lower-priority patients wait for hours on end. Garland, a retired McGill University manager, was bumped eight times by other calls that were deemed more urgent.
Garland had first phoned 911 just after 7:30 a.m. and an ambulance pulled into his driveway nine hours later. Even then, he had to wait another 40 minutes for a second ambulance to show up so paramedics could carry his body vertically on a special stretcher down the hall.
He arrived at St. Mary’s Hospital at 6:30 p.m., 11 hours after first alerting 911.
Urgences Santé had evaluated Garland to be the lowest of seven levels of priority. Despite the fact that Garland phoned the ambulance dispatcher repeatedly to complain of worsening pain, his priority level remained at Level 7.
Urgences Santé did re-evaluate Garland several times during his nine-hour wait for an ambulance, but paramedics determined that his medical condition had not changed. There were moments when Urgences Santé was ready to send an ambulance to his home, but he was bumped by more urgent calls ranging from a car-crash victim to people suffering from heart attacks.
“During the re-evaluation of the situation, if the patient’s condition changes the priority level will change,” Smith explained. “But if there is no change, (the wait) could be five, six, seven hours. It’s on this question that we have to improve the way we do things.”
Urgences Santé would also like to give its paramedics the right to administer some pain medications to patients, but that would require the approval of the health ministry, Smith added.
Garland’s case has also raised questions about whether Urgences Santé has enough resources to meet the needs of an aging population. Urgences Santé covers all of Montreal and Laval. Its fleet of 110 ambulances responds to an average of 1,000 calls every 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Garland — who had hoped to be back home by now — is still recovering at St. Mary’s and is waiting to be transferred to a rehabilitation centre. Garland underwent brain surgery in 2010, and he’s “absolutely” convinced his lengthy wait triggered the neurological complications.
“This whole incident — the trauma and the stress — kind of flared everything back up, but I’m working through that,” Garland said.
If there a blessing in disguise to his ordeal, Garland acknowledged, it’s that Urgences Santé has agreed to revise its protocols in the coming months.
“My case was the crack in Urgences Santé’s protocol system,” he said.