A Nova Scotia woman has died after waiting seven hours in the emergency department at Amherst Hospital in Cumberland County.
Now her family is demanding answers and calling for change, as they say that she shouldn’t have had to wait so long to receive care after heading to the emergency room in excruciating pain.
37-year-old mother of three Allison Holthoff collapsed on the morning of December 31, 2022 complaining of a stomach ache.
Her husband, Gunter Holthoff, decided to drive her to the emergency room in an effort to avoid waiting for an ambulance. The pair arrived at the hospital around 11 a.m. that day, with Holthoff’s husband having to carry her inside due to the pain level.
Gunter Holthoff stated:
“I think that she actually started saying that she thought she was dying in the waiting room outside. But she kept saying it more and more. She said, ‘I think I’m dying. Don’t let me die here.’ And I said, ‘No, that’s why I’ve got you in the hospital.”
Staff was able to get her triaged quickly, however Allison was left to sit in a wheelchair in the waiting room.
“I did tell the triage nurse and the lady behind the desk at least a couple times that it was getting worse. She wasn’t doing good. She was in pain. And there was not much. The response was, ‘We’re doing what we can and we don’t have any beds,’” Gunter said.
At one point the pain became so excruciating for Allison, she needed to lie on the floor. She stayed there for six more hours before finally being taken inside the unit and waited another hour before a doctor came to see her.
Soon Allison’s conditioned worsened and as they tried to reposition her, she screamed in pain before her eyes rolled back and the machines began to beep.
“The next thing I hear was, ‘code blue, code blue in the X-ray’ in the PA system and from then on pretty quick that room was full of people,” he said.
Medical staff had to resuscitate her three times before she was placed on machines and her husband made the difficult decision to remove them. Allison passed soon after around 11:30 p.m. and her family is still clueless on what her official cause of death was.
Now Allison’s family is criticizing the government’s handling of the healthcare system. The Nova Scotia Health Authority is conducting a quality review, but says the process is confidential.
Video on the incident can be seen here:
https://globalnews.ca/video/rd/be29a338-906c-11ed-b986-0242ac110005/?jwsource=cl
