Myocardial Infraction

From Canada, yet another reason to look forward to nationalized government-run health care:

An elderly woman with a cane and a heart condition was told to bring her husband into a Nova Scotia hospital on her own or call 911 after he suffered a heart attack 10 metres from the facility’s front door, the couple’s son said Friday.

Patrick Smale said his 81-year-old father began having chest pains last weekend and drove to the Soldiers Memorial Hospital in Middleton, about two hours outside Halifax.

Smale said his mother, who doesn’t drive and has had two heart valve replacements, went inside the hospital to get help because her husband was unable to walk on his own due to the pain.

She was told by hospital staff that they couldn’t come out and she should bring him in herself or call 911, Smale said.

“I couldn’t believe it. I just assumed that if someone’s having a suspected heart attack at the front entrance, at least a nurse or security guard would get a wheelchair to get him in the door,” he said in Halifax, where his father was receiving treatment.

“It just seemed ridiculous that they had to call 911 to get an ambulance to do it.”

Staff called paramedics who were stationed across the street from the hospital, which describes itself online as a full service, acute care community facility.

Staff apparently also told Smale’s mother she would have to pay for the ambulance trip, he said.

In a related story… doctors refused to piss on a burning man right laying right in front of them citing environmental concerns.

And lest you think this is an isolated incident, here’s this tidbit from the story:

Smale said the outcome could have been different if an ambulance wasn’t at its post when the call went out for his dad, who had a triple bypass about three years ago and suffers from angina.

Smale said his father was expected to recover, but hopes staff will change their practices.

“Policy supersedes doing the right thing these days,” he said. “Hopefully this might change the policy a bit for someone in the future.”

Earlier this year, Saskatchewan’s health minister ordered a policy review after staff at a Saskatoon hospital called an ambulance to help a man lying just outside the emergency room doors.

Don McMorris said he was shocked to hear that paramedics were called to bring the man – who had collapsed just metres from the door – into the hospital.

Dr. Alan Drummond, the chairman of public affairs for the The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, has said staff calling ambulances to collect patients right outside hospitals happens across the country.

He pointed to a case in White Rock, B.C., in 2004. In that situation, a man brought his 22-year-old niece to the Peace Arch Hospital because she wasn’t breathing. He left her in the car and went inside to get help, but claimed staff instead phoned 911. The woman ended up dying and the family blamed the hospital’s response time. But The Fraser Health Authority said a nurse went to help and staff reacted appropriately.

The main problem with bureaucracy is that in addition to limiting the freedoms of its constituents — in this case patients — it also limits the freedom of the bureaucrats to do the competent thing, the right thing. Professionals no longer have the freedom to damn policy and do what they know to be right and correct — as opposed to what’s explicitly in the manual. Over time this cult of the expert — the policy expert not the medical expert — causes medical personnel to question their own judgment and instincts. Eventually common sense atrophies until all they know is the manual. This isn’t just bad only for patients of course, but a problem for health care professionals themselves and of course all of us. Unfortunately this phenomenon is not limited to health care.

h/t: Reader ScottM

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