Support offered to hospital staff after shootings
COBOURG -- Northumberland Hills Hospital staff are trained to keep going in a crisis, president and CEO Linda Davis said after Friday night’s deadly shootings in the emergency department.
“We were able to in fact work through the event,” she said. “Our main concern is to support our staff, physicians that were present.”
Two people, a couple in their 70s, died by gunshot.
Tom Ryan shot his wife, Helen, after they arrived at the emergency room. Cobourg Police were called and after officers arrived, Tom Ryan was shot dead.
The OPP is investigating Helen Ryan’s death while the provincial Special Investigations Unit, which looks into police encounters that result in death or injury, is investigating Tom Ryan’s death.
When asked how a firearm was brought into the emergency room by a patient, Davis said, “I’m afraid I can’t comment on that.”
As soon as it happened, the hospital redirected inbound ambulances, Davis said.
But, she added, the hospital continued functioning, with some exceptions.
Davis, who arrived at the hospital soon after the shootings, said any critical incident is difficult.
“Our staff are trained in critical incidents and they performed very professionally and very well,” she said. “However, any such event does have an emotional impact. We will continue to revisit it in the future, again looking at if there was anything that could have been done differently from our perspective.”
Support is available for staff, she added.
“We’ve had our employee assistance program in through the night to work through some of the discussion with staff and physicians and we will continue to do that as long as support is required,” Davis said.
In the hours after the shootings, some patients used social media to state they were told the hospital was in “lockdown.” But Davis said that wasn’t the case.
“In the emergency department we asked the patients to stay within the room they were in and that was just to make sure that the hallways were clear, but they were provided care throughout,” she said. “The hospital was not - it depends how you define lockdown. We were not able to accept ambulances. Our major trauma room was affected and off limits so we were unable to take very urgent patients. But if someone came in as they did through the night, we had physicians on site and they were able to see the patients that were needing that care.”
The Ryans were Canadians who lived in Houston, Texas during the winter and in Northumberland trailer parks in the summer.
They had stayed into the fall this year, recently moving to a trailer park near Colborne, but had planned to drive back to Texas, sources told Postmedia Network on Sunday.
Both of them had health issues, leading to their trip to NHH’s emergency room Friday night.
The shootings remain under investigation.
The SIU said Monday that autopsy results on the couple won’ t be released until after the SIU investigation of the police shooting is completed.