Wife’s death after 1.5-hour wait for ambulance has Edmonton doctor demanding change

Edmonton family doctor Dr. Guy Blais is grieving the unexpected loss of his wife Elaine Warren-Blais — a death he and his family believes could have been prevented.

“In medicine, we have this thing about the ‘golden hour’ — that if you get somebody treated within the hour, they’re more likely to survive,” Blais said.

But on a Friday morning six weeks ago, Blais said that critical time between life and death came and went — during which his 65-year-old wife’s condition deteriorated.

“(From) the time of the first 911 phone call to the time (help) arrived was about an hour and 24 minutes,” Blais said. “So the EMTs were working against time when they came to get her.”

In the early morning hours of July 24, Elaine got out of bed and collapsed.

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“She fainted and hit her head. I then tried to get her up, and she fainted again,” Blais said.

Elaine became cold, clammy and short of breath. Being a doctor, Blais knew she needed to get to the hospital immediately.

Blais said he called 911 at 4:52 a.m. and dispatch took his information, but wasn’t able to say when an ambulance would arrive.

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Elaine’s condition declined. She wasn’t able to stand or walk and Blais, being unable to get her to a vehicle on his own, said he called 911 again about 40 minutes later.

“I basically said the same thing that I said before — that we need an ambulance right away, she wasn’t getting better. They told me they would take the information.

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An ambulance finally arrived at 6:17 a.m.

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“While they’re assessing her, she lost consciousness again and had a cardiac arrest in our front room,” Blais said, adding EMS asked for more help to be sent to the home in the Riverbend area.

Several other EMS units quickly arrived to assist with performing CPR, starting an IV and getting Elaine loaded into the ambulance and off to the University of Alberta Hospital.

She coded again on the way to hospital.

“They did the cardiac resuscitation, shocked her twice and so on but they couldn’t get her heartbeat back in normal rhythm,” Blais said, explaining she was declared dead shortly after arriving at the U of A Hospital.

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Elaine died six weeks ago today.

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The family is still waiting for the medical examiner to determine her cause of death and in the meantime, Blais filed a complaint with Alberta Health Services.

Elaine’s widow and sister are both speaking out about a health-care system they say is fractured beyond repair.

“They’re arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. The ship has already sunk. You can’t fix it the way it is right now,” Elaine’s sister Mona Warren said on Friday.

Blais and Warren both have high praise for front-line emergency workers who treated Elaine.

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“I’m not faulting the EMTs and I’m not faulting paramedics,” Warren said.

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Ambulances and their crew being stuck at hospital, waiting for their patient to be admitted, has been a choke point in the health-care system for years in Alberta. Warren suspects that played a role in her sister’s case.

“The system needs to change, to be able to free (paramedics) up so that they actually go out and do the work that’s required.”

Not enough people staffing a health-care system stretched thin is not a new story in Alberta, but Blais and Warren say tragedies like theirs highlight the gaps patients are falling through.

“If they could have responded in the timely manner that it normally should take an ambulance in the city of Edmonton, I believe Elaine would have survived and we wouldn’t be here today,” Warren said.

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Emergency Health Services Alberta said it is looking into what happened.

“An investigation is underway to better understand the circumstances surrounding this call,” the organization said in a statement Friday.

“Due to patient privacy, we cannot comment further on the specifics of this incident at this time. EHS-Alberta takes concerns about emergency response times very seriously. We know how important it is for Albertans to have confidence in the emergency medical services they rely on, and we are committed to providing timely, safe and reliable care.”

The family that Elaine Warren-Blais left behind doesn’t just want lessons to be learned from their tragedy — they want action.

“My concern is that this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” said Blais.