Stabbing at Edmonton hospital ER prompts calls for increased safety measures

Staff and patients are questioning safety at the Royal Alexandra Hospital after a stabbing on Friday night. CTV News Edmonton's Evan Kenny reports.

A Royal Alexandra Hospital emergency room doctor wants the Alberta government to put rules in place to make hospitals safer after a patient was stabbed last week.

Dr. Warren Thirsk, also a section president for the Alberta Medical Association, said the stabbing at the Royal Alexandra Hospital’s ER last Friday made him sad and scared about the lack of safety in hospitals.

“That was a very scary, real and potentially lethal situation for everyone within 20 feet of that knife,” Dr. Thirsk told CTV News Edmonton on Monday.

He wants the province to make hospitals no-weapon zones and empower officers to confiscate them, no questions asked.

“We have real-world examples of places, like airports, where there is a zero-tolerance policy for anything that resembles a weapon,” he said.

“The last time I felt relatively safe in an emergency department was back in the year 2000 when I was doing trauma training in Denver, and they had metal detectors at the emergency department, and they had fully empowered police officers enforcing the confiscation of weapons and maintaining the safety of everyone in the department.”

Last Friday night, in a post on X, Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones said the province would accelerate the implementation of weapons screening at the central Edmonton hospital.

The screening, and additional officers, will increase protection for staff and patients, he said.

“We recognize that incidents like this are unsettling. No one, patients, staff, or physicians, should feel unsafe in our hospitals,” the minister said. “I remain committed to ensuring a safe environment for those seeking care and for the dedicated health-care workers who provide it. We will continue to take steps to strengthen safety at this site.”

Sarah Hoffman, NDP shadow minister for hospitals, wants Jones to meet with everyone who was there that night, including security, health-care staff and patients, “to hear their stories and put the resources in place to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.

“Because I’m not confident right now that it won’t.”

The victim, 42, sustained serious, life-threatening injuries, and a man was charged with assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm.

Both were seeking care and the attack was unprovoked, Jones said.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Evan Kenny