A British Columbia kidney patient who had to be airlifted to a Kelowna hospital for treatment was stuck sleeping in the hospitalās hallway for five days because all the rooms were full.
Shawn Ponte was airlifted from Cranbrook, B.C. to Kelowna General Hospital last week. Five days later, he was still sleeping in a bed in a hallway.
Instead of getting angry, Ponte decided to post videos to Facebook to make his point.
In one video, he records the din of hospital machines just a few feet from his bed. āItās making me go bonkers,ā he says in a video he called āIām going nuts at Kelowna General Hospitalā on Facebook.
I'm going nuts at Kelowna general hospital
Posted by on Monday, January 2, 2017
Ponte said he went public with his concerns not just for himself but for others who need care.
āIf they were so full, and didnāt have the room to begin with, why didnāt they tell the Cranbrook hospital and they could have sent me to a different hospital that could have taken care of me properly,ā Ponte said in an interview with CTV Vancouver.
āItās probably happened before to other people and they just havenāt had the means to get it out there and I finally stood up for myself and said, āHey, enough is enough.āā
Kelowna General Hospitalās administration is calling the situation āunfortunateā and says Ponteās five-day hallway stint will be the subject of a review.
āWe try to minimize that as much as possible, and it is quite rare to have that length of time however it shows the increased acuity and the demand of hospital care right now,ā Andrew Hughes, the hospitalās head of medical services, told Ā鶹“«Ć½.
After five days, Ponte was moved into a room and said Wednesday that was looking forward to getting his operation over with so that he can go back home.
With a report by CTV Vancouverās Kent Molgat