My trip to a Winnipeg hospital turned into a medical ‘gong show’ – CBC

Jo Davies describes ‘pure chaos’ in urgent care: ‘It seems as if patients have been abandoned’

Mar 31, 2024

You know things are going off the rails with Manitoba’s health care when it feels like the average emergency room wait time equals a round of golf.

I experienced such a wait after I woke up one day last month with arms in so much pain, I was screaming. The walk-in clinic doctor I saw sent me to Victoria Hospital urgent care.

Six hours later, no one had taken my temperature, let alone given me any diagnostic tests. In all, I waited for 38½ hours there. (These sort of wait times aren’t unheard of in Manitoba. In January, the Manitoba Nurses Union said some ER wait times exceeded 30 hours.)

For nearly two days I didn’t eat, because no one could decide if I would be getting emergency shoulder surgery or not. The one doctor I managed to corral told me the X-rays they’d taken of my shoulders had been sent to Health Sciences Centre’s orthopedic team, and revealed fractures that only a seizure could have caused.

To be clear: I’d never had a seizure. I had, however, reluctantly started taking a specific medication at the insistence of my family doctor. It wasn’t until later that I discovered one of its side-effects, although rare, was seizures. Lucky me.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/first-person-victoria-hospital-urgent-care-wait-1.7154698