For people who don’t work in the emergency dept, it is very hard to understand how anyone could die in a waiting room. Unfortunately it happens more often than people realize. Most times it is not the fault of triage, doctors, or nurses. It is the fault of a very broken health care system. It is not something that can be fixed over night either. When someone comes to emergency they are given a CTAS score, 1 to 5. These are roughly what these scores mean. There is a lot that goes into calculating the numbers but these are simplified explanations. 1 = you are basically dead and we ( ems, nurses, doctors, respiratory techs, etc) are actively trying to save your life. 2 = you need to be seen immediately but are still alive. 3 = you can wait 15-20 mins to be seen. 4 = you can wait maybe an hour or so to be seen 5 = you could have gone to you family doctor The guy who passed was probably categorized as a 2. I don’t work at the Grey Nun’s, I work at a different hospital, so this is just speculation and only based on the information given in this post. Most hospitals in Edmonton are over capacity right now. Our ICU’s, cardiac units, etc are full. You can’t move people out of emergency, if there are no beds. You also can’t send a patient who is possibly having a heart attack to an internal medicine, post surgery, respiratory, etc unit. They have to go to an appropriate unit who has staff and resources to take care of them. Now let’s go back to this man being triaged as a 2. Let’s say he comes in at 5pm and complains of chest pain. In a room of 100 people ( and there were more than that in the waiting room) let’s say 30 people are also triaged as a 2, that have come in before him. These could be for various reasons but are all very serious. The doctor orders lab work, an ecg ( a test to see what the heart is currently doing) and probably a chest xray. It takes 30-60 mins on average to get lab work, the ecg done and an xray. It could have taken even longer depending on how many other people ahead of him that need the same things. There are only so many lab techs, xray rooms and techs and ecg machines. So once all his tests come back, they may have not captured anything major yet. The man could have been having angina at the time when the tests were done. This is basically just pain of the heart. It’s not a heart attack but can still be very painful. These tests only capture the exact moment they are taken. It could have been hours later the man had the actual heart attack. While the man sits and waits in the waiting room, several CTAS 1 patients come through the department. These could be active heart attacks, overdoses, car accidents, traumas, respiratory arrests, suicides, etc. These are people actively trying to die. The beds are full in the limited spaces for trauma. No one’s moving because ICU is full. Paramedics and nurses are in the ambulance bay doing CPR on people sometimes cause there are no beds in trauma. Acute care area is full because it’s full of very sick people who need to be admitted to the hospital but all the units are full, so they stay in the emergency dept till a bed can be found, even at different hospitals. The only area that flips at a decent rate is fast track. It is for the patients who don’t need to be admitted but still need care. A broken wrist, cuts that need to be sutured, a kid who put a pea up their nose, etc. This is not an area set up for a man who has chest pain. The resources are not there and staff might be 1-2 nurses for 10+ patients. So the man needs to sit at wait, and wait, and wait. Meanwhile other people come in. Some more life threatening, in the moment, than him. There isn’t enough information in the article to explain exactly what happened to him but some heart attacks are fast and deadly, sometimes it’s a pulmonary embolism ( blood clot) , an aneurysm ( stretched out blood vessel that popped, etc. These can all be very quick and very hard if near impossible to save someone from. Even if they were in the trauma bay with a whole team and resources. There are currently only 143 ICU beds in Edmonton. Of those beds, some are specifically designated as cardiac, neurological, trauma, etc. Edmonton and local area, has a population of 1.58 million people. We do not have enough beds to deal with this population. We don’t have the staff either. It is absolutely heart breaking this man passed away in the waiting room. We, as staff, are probably even more angry and frustrated than the general public because we see exactly what is going on, on a daily basis. Units are putting patients in hallways, offices, play spaces, etc just to get them admitted. Nurses are taking assignments of 1 nurse to 5-10 patients on some units. This is unsafe for the patient and very hard on the nurse. People who should be in ICU are on units because someone sicker needed the ICU bed. It’s not just an emergency room problem, it’s a whole health care system emergency that needs to be addressed and properly dealt with by the government. The current government wants a private health care system. Easiest way to achieve this ,with public support,is to make the public system absolutely horrifying. People need to die, the public needs to be outraged and fed up with wait times, over crowding, not a quick enough responses from medical staff, etc. They are pushing the health care system past its breaking point and we are desperately trying to keep it together. As staff we are over worked, burned out, abused (physically, emotionally and sometimes sexually), frustrated , heartbroken, etc. We love helping people though so we continue to show up. We all have our breaking points too though and lots of staff are leaving because they can’t take it anymore. So next time you are in the hospital treat the staff you interact with, with kindness and compassion, instead of screaming at them and belittling them. Your kind behaviour might be what keeps them going for the day and returning tomorrow. I’m so sorry to the family that lost a son, a father, a husband and friend. My heart goes out to you. I hope you make a lot of noise and push for a better health care system. I hope you can find a way to heal and celebrate the man’s life.