A 73-year-old woman spent her final hours of life sitting in a wheelchair in Royal Columbian Hospital’s emergency room waiting for a treatment bed to open up. Her family says she died an “undignified death” and was not being properly cared for.
Surjit Kaur, a mother and grandmother, was taken to the emergency room on March 6. She was diagnosed with a bladder infection and sent home with a prescription for antibiotics.
At home, she began throwing up for several days. Without any improvements after a week, a clinic doctor gave Kaur an urgent care note and sent her to the emergency room.
That day, on March 14, Kaur was seen by a doctor in the emergency room at Royal Columbian Hospital. She had her blood taken, and was seated in a wheelchair in the waiting room.
“After that, there was nothing. My cousin called me around seven o’clock saying, ‘Hey we’ve been here for six hours and she’s still sitting in a wheelchair. Nobody’s come to look at her or tell us what the test results were or anything,’” Amarjit Minhas, Kaur’s niece, told Global News.
Minhas, who is a registered nurse, said she was shocked her aunt’s vitals were not being monitored in any way, and she was not receiving fluids, after vomiting and having diarrhea for over a week.
The family says hospital staff told them they can’t monitor the patient or administer an IV unless the patient is in a treatment bed.
There was no bed available for Kaur, and she was left sitting in a chair for hours.
Minhas said her cousin had faith in the hospital to treat her aunt properly.
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“He trusts the system, he trusts the nurses, he trusts the doctors to be doing what they were supposed to be doing, but they weren’t,” Minhas said.
At 7:45 p.m., the hospital found a bed for Kaur, but when they went to transfer her, it was too late. She was unresponsive. They tried to resuscitate her for 20 minutes but she ultimately passed away.
Minhas says she doesn’t know if better treatment would have saved her aunt, but it could have provided her a more dignified death.
“She could’ve died with family around her and all the rituals that we do before somebody dies. She could have died like that if she had been taken care of.”
Kaur’s family said Fraser Health has taken responsibility, and promises changes will be implemented to prevent this from happening in the future. But, when Global News asked Fraser Health what went wrong, and what those changes would be, they provided this statement:
“We have been working closely with the family, including arranging meetings with clinical staff and administration. We have reviewed the patient’s chart and have shared all of the information related to her care with the family. Unfortunately, this woman was very ill. It is hard to lose a loved one. We are continuing to work with the family to support them through their loss.”
Troubled history in Fraser Health emergency rooms
Kaur’s family is the fourth to come to Global News after a loved one died after a visit to a Fraser Health Authority emergency room.
In September 2016, 27-year-old Kris Biggs arrived at the Surrey Memorial Hospital emergency room with severe chest, back and head pain. Doctors told him it was dehydration and muscle soreness and sent him home, but he died in bed the next day of an undiagnosed aortic dissection.
Mary Lou Murphy went to Abbotsford Regional Hospital on Jan. 30, sweating profusely and in considerable pain. After a five-hour wait, she was given a shot of morphine and sent home, Fraser Health said. She died the next day.
Just a week later, Balraj Gill took her three-year-old daughter Nimrat to the same hospital with a fever. Gill said she was advised to go home and give her daughter Tylenol. She was rushed back to the hospital the next day after her condition worsened, where she later died.
Judy Darcy, the BC NDP health critic, questions how many people have to die before changes are made.
“There has been one crisis after another, in one emergency room after another in Fraser Health. We’ve raised this issue repeatedly in the legislature. It’s long overdue that the government stepped in and took responsibility,” Darcy said.
For Minhas, her experience as an emergency room nurse gives her a vital perspective on the issue.
“I’m just so sad that I work in a system where this kind of thing can happen. I worked in the ER 30 years ago, and things were bad then and there have been some improvement, but things are still as bad.”
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