‘Absolutely no privacy’: Patient treated in hospital hallway for two days

WATCH: A Saskatoon woman says she was shocked by what she saw inside the emergency department at Saskatoon's Royal University Hospital (RUH).

A recent surge in patients at a Saskatoon hospital forced treatment to spill out into the hallways.

Lynn Harmon took her mother to the emergency department at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital (RUH) last week. Her mom was experiencing serious chest pain, Harmon explained.

“It wasn’t a tremendously long wait inside the emergency room, but it was in the hallways, afterwards,” she told CTV News.

Harmon says her mother received care in a hospital hallway for two days before she was moved to an inpatient bed in her own room.

Video and photos taken by Harmon show two hallways lined with stretchers and machines plugged into extension cords. Some beds were separated by mobile dividers. Others weren’t.

“There was absolutely no privacy,” said Harmon, adding the hallways were “very congested” and appeared to be used as a main thoroughfare for other hospital staff and visitors.

“My mom, who has a compromised immune system, was next to people who were there supposedly with viral infections,” she said.

At one point, Harmon said people were passing by as her mother’s chest was exposed during her EKG.

“She got her help that she wanted,” she said. “We can’t complain about it, but I think we need a little bit more privacy, a little bit more dignity, (and) a little bit more compassion from the health region.”

Harmon posted the videos to social media, garnering more than 145,000 views. She said she wanted people to understand that this is a reality.

“This is really happening … this is our Canada now,” she said.

The practice has become known as hallway medicine, as capacity surges in emergency departments across the country.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) says capacity at RUH began to spike early last week.

Several factors led to the overcrowding, according to the SHA, including an early wave of seasonal flu and respiratory viruses.

“More people were accessing the emergency department, and they were sicker, resulting in more people being admitted, which created more capacity challenges within our hospital system,” said John Ash, the SHA’s vice-president of Integrated Saskatoon Health.

At the peak of the surge, 42 patients were on the waitlist for an inpatient bed, according to Ash. However, not all those patients received care in the hallways.

Capacity pressures can happen, Ash said, which is why surge plans are in place to treat as many patients as possible in a timely manner.

Treating patients in hallways as they wait for inpatient beds to become available is part of the surge plan at RUH, Ash explained, but he hopes they can limit that practice as the hospital introduces more beds.

“We don’t want to have patients waiting in the hallway,” he said. “Obviously, that is not our ideal environment.”

Last month, the SHA added 20 new beds to its total capacity within the City of Saskatoon. An additional 89 beds will be available in the coming months.

Hallway medicine has been an “ongoing problem” for more than a decade, according to Dr. Margot Burnell, president of the Canadian Medical Association.

“Sometimes it’s not an issue. But if there’s a stressor on the system, such as respiratory tract season or a major accident in the local neighbourhood, then the system becomes stressed,” she said.

This is not the ideal care medical professionals want to provide, Burnell said, adding it can lead to misdiagnoses or delayed diagnoses, medication errors and a decrease in patient privacy.

“It is unacceptable. Every patient deserves to be treated in the appropriate environment, with privacy and infection control protocols, and to have that care as they would on an inpatient floor,” she said.

The issue will take time to fix, Burnell said. Community resources and alternative levels of care need to increase for symptoms to be caught early and potentially avoid visits to the emergency department. Patient flow also needs to be adjusted, she said, as many patients taking up inpatient beds are on waitlists for other facilities, such as nursing homes and assisted living.

As of Thursday afternoon, the SHA expected capacity pressures to be resolved by the end of the day, and hallways will no longer be needed to treat patients.