Letter: A Heartbreaking Experience at Owen Sound Hospital
In a letter submitted to Brightshores Health System and shared to media, a reader recounts a cancer patient’s long ER wait in Owen Sound and urges leadership to address emergency care delays.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
On Tuesday, September 16, I took my nephew to the Owen Sound hospital emergency room. With me was my great-niece, his daughter.
My nephew is a cancer patient with esophageal cancer and had not been able to eat or drink for 36 hours without throwing up. We feared that he was becoming dangerously dehydrated and in a semi-panic state, we took him to the nearest hospital, which was in Owen Sound. He had been treated at the Owen Sound hospital less than two weeks before.
He was seen by the Triage intake staff person. Then we waited for three and a half hours, keeping an eye on my nephew and hoping he could keep down small amounts of water until he was seen by a doctor and put on a drip.
At that point, after that three-and-a-half-hour wait, a nurse entered the emergency reception area and announced that no one sitting in the emergency room would be able to see a doctor for several hours.
My heart fell. We didn’t know whether to put him through any more painful sitting up and waiting, but my nephew made the call. He was too uncomfortable to wait any longer, and we went home without being seen, where he needed to rest and recover.
It was a heartbreaking experience for us; we were not sure he would last the night without hydration!
The chief recipient of this letter is the Brightshores Board of Directors, for which there is no email address online. Therefore, I am addressing it to Mr. Madill, trusting that he will forward it to the members of the Board.
On behalf of my family, I request a reply from the Brightshores Board of Directors assuring us that the complete lack of safe, efficient emergency service for an extended period of time will not happen again at the Owen Sound Hospital or anywhere in the six-hospital jurisdiction of Brightshores. Not to us! Not to anyone!
Joyce Hall
Letters to the Editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of The Owen Sound Current and its editor or publisher.