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When the man, who has asked that his name not be used, was called in to see the triage nurse, he says she first scolded him for sitting on the floor. “I explained how much pain I was in but she showed no understanding or any sympathy whatsoever and repeated herself again,” he later wrote to the hospital’s patient advocacy office.

The nurse asked why he was there and he said he thought he had broken his arm, explaining he’d had a previous break and was left with metal plates and screws which he thought might be causing his extreme pain. “She told me not to make my own diagnosis and started egging me into a debate over how to respond to her question.”

He says she continued to argue with him as he breathed heavily and shook from pain. “She was probably having a bad day and I was her target.” Eventually, he was so desperate for help, he stood up and said he couldn’t take it any more and was going to drive himself to the Queensway Carleton Hospital. “She said, OK, you do that.”

The man said he was quickly diagnosed with a broken arm at Queensway Carleton, given pain medication as well as support for his arm and scheduled for surgery. He says he shouldn’t have driven himself there, though, because he was in obvious shock. “I was not in the right state of mind to be driving. I think she should have picked up on that. I think they would have held responsibility if something had happened to me on the road … it’s the same as leaving a bar late at night.”

The clinical manager of the Civic emergency department later contacted him to apologize for his experience, saying she had spoken with two nurses and told them it wasn’t acceptable. “My case was particularly bad in my mind because I left the hospital in a very unsafe state,” he said.