The Island’s largest referral hospital has launched a full investigation after a woman was forced to experience a miscarriage in the hospital’s packed emergency department waiting room.
Christine Handrahan of Peakes waited more than three hours, blood seeping out of her jeans, not knowing whether she may be losing her first baby or whether something more serious was happening.
Handrahan and her husband, Michael, then travelled more than 45 minutes to Prince County Hospital in Summerside. There, she was immediately rushed into that hospital’s emergency room where she was told the sad news, she had lost her baby.
Dr. Rosemary Henderson, acting executive director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, would not get into specifics about the Handrahan case, but she confirms a full investigation is being launched.
“Nurses do have compassion but in situations like this where they’re being overworked, they are being asked to do overtime, you can see burnout happening at a faster rate,” - MONA O’SHEA, P.E.I. NURSES UNION.
Henderson also paints a picture of an emergency room under increasing pressure, without the staff it needs to do its job and unable to meet the timelines to treatment set out in national guidelines.
“You’ve got a combination of increased volume, a new department where we haven’t gotten all the kinks worked out, and certainly physician shortages and not as many nursing staff as we would really like to have compounded by vacations,” Henderson said in an interview.
“It does make it pretty difficult to try and meet the kind of targets that we want to meet with respect to timeliness of seeing patients.”
This happened to me as well 10 years ago. I knew that I was having a miscarriage and proceeded to a packed waiting room at the QEH. Was triaged quickely and told to wait in the waiting room. Well I waited and waited and waited quietly morning the impending loss of my baby among many strangers. I kept asking the nurses when could I see the doctor they told me as soon as they had a room, that there were 2 other ladies who were also having miscarriages, that were occupying the rooms. After 7 or 8 hours I am not quite sure exactly how long, but I did get finally get to see the doctor, only to be rushed into a room examined, the doctor stated that yes, I had had a miscarriage, this type of thing happens to 1 in 4 pregnancies and told to go home. Don't be fooled people this is not something new, it has been happening for quite some time, it just took this brave couple to bring it to light.