'My permanent loss': Widow of man who died in Edmonton ER will say final goodbyes on New Year's Eve

The majority of Edmontonians will spend New Year’s Eve waving goodbye to 2025. But Niharika Sreekumar will gather with family and friends to say a final goodbye to her husband, Prashant, who died Dec. 22 in the emergency ward of Grey Nuns Community Hospital.

Prashant’s funeral is set for Wednesday.

“I don’t have any words right now,” said Niharika. “Tomorrow is such a big day, a day that I wish never, never comes. And the people behind this, they don’t have to just be sorry. They have to do something about it.”

Prashant checked in at the Grey Nuns’ emergency ward Dec. 22, complaining of chest pains. Staff performed an electrocardiogram (ECG) on him, and also drew his blood. After no abnormalities were shown in the ECG or in the blood work, Prashant waited eight hours before being admitted to an emergency-ward bed. He died shortly after that.

Prashant’s death has led to reviews from Covenant Health, and moves by Acute Care Alberta it says will help take pressure off of emergency rooms in Edmonton and Calgary. Condolences were issued online by Premier Danielle Smith.

Acute Care Alberta has issued a list of actions that it says should help ease pressure on the system. They include opening additional surge beds, “load levelling,” the expedited discharge of patients with supports, and efforts to have provincial health agencies increase available spaces.

There is also a pledge to maximize and expand virtual care, and limit patient transfers to areas that are already under capacity strain.

Additionally, there’s a promise to increase the use of part-time staff, recruitment of new staff, and redeployment of people where needed.

Acute Care Alberta says its $81.5-million action plan will add 350 beds to the Grey Nuns and another 350 at Edmonton’s Misericordia Hospital. It promises 1,000 new beds for Edmonton and Calgary. The site for a new 321-bed standalone Stollery Children’s Hospital has been selected, at 122 Street and 51 Avenue. But that site selection was announced in November, and there are no shovels in the ground.

“Currently, a total of 336 beds have been added in the last year, 130 for peak seasonal times and 206 for year-round,” said Angela Unsworth, spokeswoman for Acute Care Alberta.

“For levelling emergency departments, 911 calls are triaged and sent to the site best able to meet patient needs, examining site capacity and emergency room patient acuity and volume.”

For Niharika, the promises to make changes to the health-care system don’t mean a lot. They aren’t going to bring her husband back.

“How is this going to help me with the loss that has happened to me?” she said. “That (the Acute Care Alberta list of actions) is futuristic. I don’t know how futuristic. I don’t want to make any comments on them. I guess the point of the matter is: what about my loss? My permanent loss.”

And, for her, it’s too early to contemplate any sort of legal action against the hospital, Covenant Health or the province.

“I haven’t even been able to come out of my grief yet.”

Questions about triage: Doctor

Dr. Raj Sherman, an Edmonton emergency room physician and the former leader of the Alberta Liberal Party, told Postmedia that Prashant’s death is the product of an overcrowded health-care system. He said a patient suffering from heavy chest pains should be in an emergency-room bed within half an hour of being triaged.

But another Edmonton doctor, Vernon Chichak, has questioned the triage process. He said that blaming the system is the obvious thing to do, but deeper questions need to be asked about the chain of care in our emergency rooms.

“I think the difficulty in all hospitals, not necessarily just the Grey Nuns, is the concern about triage,” said Chichak, who in 2019 co-authored a paper published by the University of Toronto on the first hospitalized case of COVID-19 in Alberta.

“Who is doing the triage, and what qualifications do they have? Are they able to make a differential diagnosis? A patient has chest pains, but normal heart tracing and high blood pressure? Well, you have to think about what’s called an aortic dissection.

“I’m not going to jump to conclusions, but I’d be very surprised if the medical examiner’s office doesn’t find that something catastrophic happened to this individual. And I think it boils down to triage. When you see a patient with chest pain with normal heart tracing, you’d better think of other things rather than just dismissing it and saying go back to the end of the line. What are the qualifications of the people doing the triage? Are they an MD or a registered nurse? What kind of qualified health-care professional are they?”

He said it’s much easier for a doctor or a nurse to find what a patient doesn’t have rather than pinpointing the correct diagnosis.

“The difficulty in medicine is making a diagnosis,” said Chichak. “All arguments aside about the overloading of the emergency department and the triage and all that sort of stuff, is that this basically boils down to common sense. A 44-year-old gentleman has chest pain means that your red flags need to go up quite, quite, quite aggressively. You have to say, ‘Look, I better make sure I’m not missing this.’

“When I was a medical student, through my training, I’d said that I’m not going to miss a lung clot or a heart attack or a dissection of the aorta. Those are the three big things I am concerned about when a patient has chest pain.”

ssandor@postmedia.com

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