‘Unimaginable’: Couple waits 2.5 hours for ambulance after injury at Halifax park

A Nova Scotia couple was left in shock after it took more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive for a painful injury at a downtown Halifax park.

Donna McInnis and her husband Kevin went to Point Pleasant Park, in the south end of Halifax, on Oct. 30. It was a sunny day.

The senior couple was walking alongside a retaining wall, getting a glimpse of a large aircraft carrier docked in the Halifax harbour.

McInnis was walking just a few steps ahead, and when she turned around, there was no sight of her husband. He had fallen between the short retaining wall and a parked vehicle, injuring his hip.

She immediately called 911.

The ambulance, she said, took two and a half hours to arrive.

“I was dismayed,” McInnis said. “I felt uncertain that help was coming. I didn’t know what else to do.”

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She knew a bit about where to apply pressure to avoid nerve damage, so the two stayed stuck in place.

“He was in spasms, increasingly shivering. He was obviously in pain,” McInnis said.

She said some passers-by stayed with them for a while, but eventually they had to leave and it started getting cold outside, and dark.

“I couldn’t leave him, even to fetch some sort of support, if I knew what to do.”

McInnis said she never thought it could take that long for the ambulance to arrive. The park is located less than four kilometres from the QEII emergency department.

“Time goes very slowly,” she said. “The first 20 minutes you’re watching anxiously, after half an hour you call ‘You remember us?,” the next hour inches by. The subsequent hour is just awful.”

Once the ambulance did arrive, McInnis said they told her they came from Hants County – a near-hour-long drive away.

“I was in the heart of the city, and there was no ambulance available.”

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“It’s unimaginable,” she said.

Delays a common occurrence

Kevin McMullen, business manager of the union representing Nova Scotia paramedics, said cases like these happen “all too often.”

“Our apologies, from myself and our paramedics, for the delay for her and her husband,” McMullen said.

“It’s unfortunate. What we’re seeing is a higher increase in demand for calls and fewer resources because we’re just not able to staff enough units at the present time.”

Health Minister Michelle Thompson also expressed apologies to the McInnis’. Though she wasn’t familiar with the details of the case, she said she’s “very sorry that happened.”

Thompson confirmed offload times are a big part of ambulance waits. She said government is working on increasing capacity in long-term beds to alleviate offload times with incoming patients.

“We are working with paramedics, we’re working with the union and the company,” Thomson said. “We have increased the number of non-paramedic drivers to separate transfers, non-urgent transfers from emergency calls.”

Since that change, according to Thompson, the number of drives completed by paramedics dropped to 22 per cent from 85 per cent.

However, she said there are currently vacancies for paramedics in the province.

“We do know that workforce is a significant issue,” Thompson said, adding there were fewer paramedics graduating during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as increased absences. “It’s not just one thing, we need to take a holistic look that workforce.”

McMullen said staff retention should be top-of-mind for the government.

“Working conditions are just terrible now for paramedics,” McMullen said.

“One hundred paramedics have left the system in the last 10 months, and they’re leaving for various reasons: to go to other regions, that are paying more money, better working conditions, more resources.”

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McMullen said bringing in drivers was helpful, but more needs to be done.

“They’re doing the best they can, I understand. But we have a high volume of calls,” he said.

“We have the best trained paramedics across Canada, here in Nova Scotia, and we’re going to lose that expertise.”

Provincial NDP leader Claudia Chender agrees.

“I think it’s terrible,” Chender said of the McInnis’ situation.

“We simply don’t have enough paramedics. While the government says that they’re working on it, we see no evidence of that … I think that’s very frightening for people.”

The union said though system improvements take time, more competitive wages are a quicker fix.

“We’re on the lowest end of the scale in remuneration for our paramedics, who are highly trained and work to the top competencies in Canada,” McMullen added.

“If you’re going to have that kind of a system, you have to pay for it. It’s expensive, we understand that.”

As for the public, McMullen wants to assure Nova Scotians they will get the help they need.

“Right now, we’re stressed to the max,” he said. “But please, continue to call. Be patient. You will get professional help from our paramedics who care very much.”

— with files from Global News’ Alicia Draus