MONTREAL -- Urgences-Sante has admitted to a 'lack of professionalism' on the part of two paramedics who responded to a 911 call last month.
Linda Jones Dion filed a formal complaint after it took nearly three hours to transport her husband to the hospital.
The incident happened on Sept. 21, when the long-term care residence in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue where Jones-Dion's husband Claude Dion lives, called 9-1-1 to take the man, who has dementia and prostate cancer, to the hospital after he began bleeding from his bowels.
The staff called for an ambulance at 5:09 p.m. His wife drove herself to Lachine Hospital and waited for the ambulance, which only arrived at 7:41 p.m.
Jones Dion said she was frantic waiting, because there was none of the communication she'd been told to expect. She said she was worried her husband's mental health could have been affected by the long wait.
After filing a formal complaint with Urgences-Sante, on Monday she received the conclusions of the investigation.
The Service Quality and Complaints Commissioner took into account:
- the report of the sequence of events
- the paramedics' report
- 911 calls, and record of treatment offered
- a report from the Director of Care to assess work done by paramedics and dispatchers
The commissioner concluded the dispatcher should have classified the call as intermediate instead of low priority so the ambulance would have arrived quicker, adding that they should not have misled Jones-Dion into thinking she'd be kept up to date about the transport because they were so busy that day.
The report also stated that "vital signs were not taken as indicated in protocols. Clinical monitoring was weak and the transport should have been done much faster, using a shorter route (via Highway 40, rather than Lakeshore Drive) and driving in an urgent mode, rather than non-urgent."
The paramedic who was driving during the incident in question has received a disciplinary letter; the paramedic at Dion's bedside was reminded about which procedures to follow, which also documented in his personnel file.
Jones-Dion is satisfied with the outcome.
"They did a thorough investigation," she said. "They went into all the people that were answering the calls and why it took them such a delay to answer us back, as to why the drivers took so long to come. So they explained that in the letter and they also explained how they reprimanded the drivers so it'll just kind of make people more aware. We had a dementia patient in the back of that ambulance, right?"
The commissioner also wrote he sincerely regrets the "lack of professionalism."
Jones-Dion said she sees this as an isolated incident, adding that she has benefitted from the care of paramedics before and even at one time wrote a thank you letter to Urgences-Sante commending the paramedics for their work.
She said that for her, the matter has been resolved.
