A Surrey, B.C., senior who waited 10 hours for an ambulance with a broken hip is speaking out in the hopes of making emergency care an issue in her local byelection.
Jaqui Joys fell and broke her hip at home on Aug. 7, and logged her first 911 call around 9 p.m.
Her son came to tend to her as she waited, but when no ambulance had arrived by midnight, they called again.
At 3:30 a.m., still immobilized, she phoned a third time.
“Twice they said the ambulance was on the way, however it obviously wasn’t … They kept saying yes, they were on their way,” Joys said.
“It’s frustrating with them, because they say they’re on their way, and I don’t know where they were coming from — Grand Prairie? Where? And no timeline.”
Finally, around 7 a.m. an ambulance arrived and took Joys to hospital, where she was admitted for hip surgery within hours.
Joys said when they finally arrived the paramedics were “excellent,” and that she understands there is a labour shortage in the health-care system, but she is angry that the system has reached a point where such a delay can happen.
“Ten hours is not a reasonable length of time,” she said.
“There has to be some priorities made, and EMS I think is a very important priority.”
In an interview, B.C. Emergency Health Services executive vice-president and chief ambulance officer Leanne Heppell apologized to Joys for the painful delay.
“We answer the most acute calls first, and when this call came in there were a number of life-threatening calls going on at the same time,” she said.
“We did check back with the patient as part of our policy to ensure that the patient condition did not deteriorate during the wait and to see if we needed to increase the acuity of the call.”
Nonetheless, Heppell said the file would be reviewed, and that officials were willing to meet with Joys to talk about what happened.
Joys’ case did, however, get candidates in the South Surrey byelection talking.
BC Liberal candidate Elenore Sturko called the incident “extremely disheartening.”
“Not just this incident, but several incidents where people have waited in a lot of pain and suffering to receive emergency help, we’ve also had people pass away in our province pass away as a result of having to have long waits without help,” Sturko said.
Two people have died this summer of heart attacks in the community of Ashcroft at times when an ambulance was not available.
Sturko said a BC Liberal government would focus on recruitment and retention of paramedics and 911 operators by putting a priority on support and wellness for stressed-out staff.
“Nobody joined these services wanting to leave people overnight suffering in their homes,” she said.
BC Green candidate Simran Sarai said paramedics are “overworked and underpaid” as they face multiple stacking crises.
“They’re burnt out, facing mental health crises themselves, while they deal with the COVID-19 deaths and while they deal with the drug toxicity crisis and other mental health epidemics,” she said.
Sarai said a Green government would urgently implement the “scheduled on-call” scheduling model the NDP government promised last summer, and change regulations to allow firefighters to take some of the burden off paramedics.
NDP candidate Pauline Greaves said she was unavailable for an interview.
“The BC NDP government has provided the ambulance service one of the largest funding lifts of any part of our health care system,” she said in an email.
“This means more dispatchers and hundreds of new paramedics. But there’s much more to do.”
In the meantime, Joys is recovering from her fall, but she says she hopes her story helps improve the system.
“How long could I have lasted here without anybody coming?” she asked.
“Something must be done quickly.”