Doctors question police eavesdropping in ER

Imagine taking a doctor into your confidence in a hospital emergency room, only to discover that someone else is recording the conversation on a smartphone. One of British Columbia’s busiest hospitals is wrestling with that very problem, and the someone else happens to be the local police.

Doctors at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster have complained that local police and RCMP officers are routinely recording conversations without consent between doctors and patients who are considered a suspect in a crime.

“They will be present when we are trying to question the patients and trying to obtain a his- tory of what happened,” said Dr. Tony Taylor, an emergency physician who practises at the hospital.

“They have now recently started recording these conversations and often they will do that unannounced, which has a number of implications around confidentiality and consent.”

Police are not an uncommon – and usually not an unwelcome – sight in Canadian hospitals. They typically accompany victims of crime, and sometimes suspected criminals who need urgent medical care.

The law also requires them to bring in patients in psychiatric distress, or who pose a risk to themselves or others. Sometimes, officers come to collect evidence like blood alcohol samples. In seven provinces, hospitals are required by law to notify the police when a gunshot victim comes looking for medical help.

In contrast to what is happening at Royal Columbian, physicians across the country say police seldom interfere with their work. Indeed, many doctors acknowledge that police need to be in hospitals to protect them and their patients.

As Dr. John Ross, professor of emergency medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, puts it: “We’ve had people shot who were not killed but were obviously injured, and the attempted murderers then showed up several hours later and ended up walking through the department looking to complete the job.”

— see ‘PERSONAL, page 2