Heart Attack Victim Ten Feet from Hospital Door, Told To Dial 911

December 9, 2009

The elderly wife of an 81-year-old Canadian man says her husband was having a heart attack ten feet from the entrance of a hospital emergency room, but she was told she had to dial 911 for help because staffers wouldn’t go outside.

The Canadian Press reports the wife, who walks with a cane and has a heart condition herself, pleaded with staffers at Soldiers Memorial Hospital in Nova Scotia last weekend to go outside and help her husband because he was unable to walk by himself because of the pain. The report says hospital workers told the woman she should either bring her husband in herself or dial 911 to get an ambulance from a dispatch center across the street. She wound up calling 911, after which paramedics did arrive to help her husband walk the ten feet into the hospital. He’s expected to recover. A hospital spokesman said the incident is under investigation.

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