'Chaotic, maddening, frustrating': Burnaby senior spends over 16 hours in crowded hospital hallway

A Burnaby resident and former city council candidate says he’s frustrated with the level of service at Burnaby Hospital, after his elderly father spent upwards of 16 hours in a hallway after being admitted because there were no rooms available for him.

Heymann Yip, who’s previously run in several municipal elections and is also a member of Burnaby’s Public Safety Committee, told the Beacon he brought his dad to the emergency room late in the evening on Saturday, Feb. 18 after he complained of problems with breathing and tightness in his chest.

“The triage nurse immediately noticed there was an issue with his oxygen levels. So they didn't even put a wristband on him to do whatever, they just rushed him into the ER and hooked him up to oxygen right away,” Yip said Wednesday.

“So we were sitting there, because there was actually no room in the ER, so we were just sitting outside the hallway where the ambulances come in… and we were there probably up until two o’clock in the morning.”

From there, Yip said his dad was moved to a couple of different locations in and around the ER—until Tuesday morning at around 7am, when he was moved into a hallway that Yip described as connecting to a large number of prep rooms. He was moved temporarily into a room overnight so that maintenance crews could clean the hallway.

He was finally moved into a room Wednesday—but Yip said his dad was far from the only patient waiting.

“They [were] just telling me there's absolutely no beds available in any of the wards. Until one is freed up, then my dad [could] go with one or two other patients that had been pushed to the hallway. Because those are the ones that have been waiting the longest,” he said.

“But inside of the ER hallway that leads all the way from ER to the imaging station—that's full of stretchers as well.”

Yip said the hallway, apart from being full of other patients waiting for rooms, is also one that’s heavily trafficked with hospital staff going to and from the cafeteria.

“So it's chaotic. It's maddening. It's frustrating. It’s [something] that, if you bring your loved one there, you’d least expect,” he said.

“It [created] anxiety [for my dad]. I mean, it's really noisy, to start with. We were in the same hallway where the seating area is. Yesterday we had to hear a two-year-old that was having a real hissy fit—because obviously, he's not feeling well, that’s why he’s in the ER area—crying for two hours. So I mean, it's unbearable. That's really putting it mildly.”

In an emailed statement, Fraser Health said it was concerned to hear that Yip’s family was not satisfied with the care provided to them—and acknowledged high patient volumes at hospitals across the region, including at Burnaby.

“Generally speaking, when patient volumes are high we use alternative spaces to accommodate the increased demand for care and place patients in accordance with current infection prevention and control guidelines. Patients needing a higher level of care are cared for in areas where we can support them and their families, such as private or semi private rooms when available,” the health authority said.

“…We have well-established structures in place to monitor and respond to ebbs and flows in patient volumes in the Emergency Departments at all our hospitals. Our network of sites and services enables us to care for higher-acuity patients at our Emergency Departments while directing patients elsewhere as needed to ensure timely care.”

Yip’s experience is the latest in a spate of stories about long ER waits and crowded hospitals that have made headlines in the Lower Mainland recently.

In November, a Burnaby mother said her experience waiting for hours to get her toddler care at Burnaby Hospital left her concerned about the health-care system in BC.

“No one came to see us, no one took her temperature, checked on her, checked her vitals, asked any questions about her until about 4 a.m., at which point she was weighed, and then the nurse left again,” Rachel Thexton told CityNews at the time.

Thexton’s family waited six hours in total before leaving without seeing a doctor.

CityNews reported that when pressed on the situation around extended wait times in BC hospitals last November, Health Minister Adrian Dix told reporters the number of people visiting emergency departments had increased.

But he said a task group was putting in place processes to “improve triage purposes,” including adding more staff to connect patients with care in the community in order to avoid unnecessary stays in hospital.

But Yip said the current situation at Burnaby Hospital has him concerned about the quality of care Burnaby residents can receive in this city—saying the ongoing hospital redevelopment doesn’t do enough to address a shortage of beds, especially with Burnaby’s quickly growing population.