Four grieving families announced Friday they are suing three Quebec hospitals over claims they did not do enough to save their loved ones.
"We are sounding alarm bells," Jean-Pierre Menard, the lawyer representing the families, said at a press conference.
The four families are suing two hospitals in the Montreal area and one in Trois-Rivieres.
Menard said that in each case, the hospital failed to follow triage procedures.
"What we have discovered is that in a lot of hospitals there is no reassessment process," he said.
The family of Nicole Dauphinais, 57, said a hospital in Montreal's suburbs didn't check on her for six-and-a-half hours, leaving her to die of a pulmonary embolism in a hospital corridor in 2005.
Marc-Andre Menard's mother complained that Santa Cabrini Hospital in St. Leonard, Que., let the 27-year-old walk away after she called an ambulance when he told her he was committing suicide by overdosing on alcohol and painkillers.
"The triage nurse classified his case as non-urgent," she told reporters. "They let him just walk out of the hospital and two hours later he hung himself."
Some studies have found that 60 per cent of ERs across Canada suffer from staff shortages.
Emergency room physicians say overworked nurses and doctors can't always cope.
"It's really an unfortunate truth. We want to help them, we just can't," said Dr. Laurent Vanier, Chairman of the Association of Urgent Medicine in Quebec.
Quebec's Health Minister Philippe Couillard said that while there has never been more money in the health system than there is now, staff shortages may still be an issue.
It's still important hospitals follow guidelines, he added.
The families say that whatever the reason, hospitals and the government have to make ERs a priority.
With a report by CTV's Genevieve Beauchemin
