3 patients die waiting for a bed: EMS
Written by: DON PEAT
Feb. 7, 2008
Hospital backlogs that leave patients in waiting rooms or on stretchers in a so-called "hall of shame" are to blame for three people dying within 24 hours at Etobicoke General Hospital, a city paramedic union leader alleges.
Glenn Fontaine, unit ambulance chairman for Toronto Paramedic Local 416, claims three people died between Monday and Tuesday at the hospital, with one of them going into cardiac arrest after sitting in the waiting room with chest pains for three hours and another patient dying after waiting with paramedics on an "offload delay" before getting a bed
Offload delays refer to paramedics at the hospital with a patient waiting for a bed.
Paramedics call the hospital's back hallway where they routinely wait with patients for an emergency room bed the "hall of shame," Fontaine said.
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