The father and step-mother of a man who died at the Royal Alexandra Hospital say they’ve been living in shock for more than two weeks, seeking answers about what happened.
On May 9, Allan Smith got the phone call no parent ever wants to receive. He was told his youngest son, 33-year-old Travis Smith, had died.
“I can’t even remember — it’s just a daze. I can’t even remember the phone call,” he said.
The family said Travis struggled with mental illness and in recent years had been homeless, living rough on the streets of Edmonton.
“We did not know where he was for the past three years,” said Smith, Travis’ stepmother.
Police told the family Travis had been brought to the hospital’s emergency department on Friday, May 8, given naloxone and placed in a waiting room.
“He received some initial therapy in the emergency room but because there were no stretcher spaces inside the emergency department, he was left in waiting room,” Alberta Medical Association President Dr. Brian Wirzba said in an interview earlier this month.
That’s where he died a few hours later.
Allan believes his son’s death might have been prevented.
“If they checked on him, he’d still be alive right now,” Allan said.
“He was not triaged, there was no nurses looking after him,” Penny added.
While police provided some details, the family says Alberta Health Services has not.
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They say they have repeatedly visited the Royal Alexandra Hospital seeking information but have not been told what happened.
“I want them to tell me,” said Penny Smith, Travis’ stepmother.
“I don’t want to tell them what happened — they should be telling us.”
The Smiths said they decided to speak publicly after learning Travis’ death had been revealed without identifying him.
“He deserves to have his story told with truth — not as a John Doe, as a stranger that died in a waiting room at a hospital,” Penny said. “He has a father, he has a mother, he has a stepmother. He’s got brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and people that love him.
“He didn’t die as a John Doe — as a person that maybe they didn’t think deserved to have proper anything.”
Penny said it was upsetting to see politicians using the death as an argument for improving the health-care system, without putting a name and face to the tragedy.
“They’re using my husband’s son, my stepson as a tool to make the system better.”
The family says it is trying to come to terms with the loss but cannot come even close to something akin to closure without more information.
“He’s got a lot of people that love him and would’ve done anything to save him,” she said.
Travis Smith is among several patients who’ve died while waiting for care across Alberta’s hospitals in recent months.
Late last year, Prashant Sreekumar, who was 44, died at Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Community Hospital after waiting nearly eight hours.
Earlier this year, Dr. Paul Parks, president-elect of the Alberta Medical Association’s section of emergency medicine, sent a letter to Alberta’s government detailing examples of another six deaths in hospitals over the span of two weeks in January. The letter also listed 30 cases that nearly ended in a death.
The letter attributed most of the deaths — and what doctors call “near misses” — to the fact that Alberta’s hospitals are clogged.
Alberta’s government ordered a judge-led inquiry into Sreekumar’s death in January, and also announced it was creating a program in which physicians would help triage patients.
The triage program, which would operate across six to eight major hospitals in Alberta, is still not in place.
Earlier this month, Alberta Health Services told Global News an investigation into Smith’s death was underway and a quality assurance review would be conducted.
AHS was asked Wednesday for an update, including why the family has not been given more information. As of publication, it had not responded.
–with files from Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press
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