‘Nightmare’ trip to ER shocks cancer patient
Woman says after four-hour wait she was moved — to a storage room
Dana Whitman, who is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, had been warned to go straight to emergency if she developed a fever. She was even given a special “fever card” that is supposed to allow chemotherapy patients to jump the queue to avoid sitting in crowded waiting rooms because they are so vulnerable to infection between rounds of the treatment.
But that wasn’t what happened when she went to Queensway-Carleton Hospital’s emergency room last week — feeling “absolutely horrible” and running a fever of 102 degrees F — in the midst of the ongoing overcrowding.
Despite her fever card, Whitman was told by staff in emergency that there was nothing they could do to help her bypass the crammed waiting room. Whitman put on a face mask to protect herself and sat in the waiting room for 4 1/2 hours before she was taken into the emergency department. She was led past people lying on stretchers and taken to what appeared to be a storage room, she said.
There were chairs, pillows and blankets stacked around her, and no bed.
“They said they wanted to get me out of the waiting room.”
Whitman praised staff who appeared to be scrambling to cope with the situation, she said. But she remains shocked at her experience. “It was a nightmare.” Of the emergency department, she said, “I felt like I was in a war zone.”
Officials from the Queensway-Carleton and The Ottawa Hospital confirmed this week they are dealing with an ongoing overcrowding crisis.
It led the Queensway-Carleton to cancel elective surgery Tuesday to make room for more than 20 patients who had been admitted to the hospital through the emergency department but for whom there were no beds.
The Ottawa Hospital has not cancelled any surgery but has been forced to find unusual spaces for patients, including an office in one case and a wheelchair in the corner of a waiting room for another patient.
As of Tuesday, The Ottawa Hospital was at 115 per cent of capacity. It has been steadily over 100 per cent capacity for weeks.
Officials with Queensway-Carleton did not comment on Whitman’s specific case. But spokeswoman Cara Salci said in an email: “Like many other hospitals in the province we are experiencing high volumes in our emergency department and our team is doing all that we can to care for patients’ safety and as quickly as possible. We continue to see high patient volumes in our emergency department and have opened 12 overflow beds to create capacity.”
The hospital encouraged Whitman to contact the hospital’s patient ombudsman to discuss her experience. “The emergency department is a dynamic place and patient conditions can change during the course of their visit; this in turn can impact waiting times. Each patient that comes to our emergency department is triaged by a Registered Nurse based on the severity of their symptoms and condition.”
Whitman said she was surprised that the protocol she thought existed for chemotherapy patients was not followed at Queensway-Carleton. Cancer patients are given a chemotherapy class and told to be alert for fevers during chemotherapy treatment and to go to the hospital immediately if they develop one.
“Yes, this is what our health care has come to,” she said in a Facebook comment posted under a Citizen story about the overcrowding crisis in Ottawa hospitals.
Whitman was treated with fluids in an intravenous drip and given a Tylenol to take her fever down. Blood and urine tests were conducted, as well as a chest X-ray. She later returned home and was told to monitor her heart rate and temperature. In a couple of days, she said, it turned around and she felt better.
“I don’t have an issue with the staff,” she said. “I just can’t believe this is what it has come to.”