61-year-old Brian Childs was treated at the Health Sciences Center and suddenly disappeared, after which he was found dead in the toilet of the main floor of the hospital.
The patient was seriously ill. He had multiple sclerosis and was recently diagnosed with a form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Brian could not move independently and used an electric scooter for this. The family put him in a hospital in August when he began to have problems with breathing.
Now his family wants an answer, how could this happen. Brian was to be discharged from the hospital on the last day of August, but the day before the family was reported about his missing. The police officers who arrived at the hospital thoroughly searched the building and found him dead in a closed toilet stall.
The Childs’s family has not yet received the final results of the autopsy, but his sisters are confident that the hospital staff did not do enough to protect him from the death. His sister Abrey said he made a decision to have an assisted death but have not yet chosen the exact date. Brian's latest desire was to die at home with his family and with the song of Eric Clapton Tears In Heaven playing.
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority stated that it is investigating this incident. However, it can not share information about the progress of the investigation, as it is marked critical. By law, the data of such an investigation are confidential.
The only thing that was learned from the representatives of WRHA is that in the HSC a special protocol is used in case of loss of the patient. This protocol regulates the actions of staff in such cases and approves the patient search system. The results of the investigation will show whether this protocol was followed during the loss of Brian.
The Childs sisters met with the team involved in the investigation of critical cases. There they learned that Brian had entered the restroom at around 10 in the morning. However, the call from the hospital arrived only after one o'clock in the afternoon. The sisters are still at a loss how it is possible to lose the patient in the hospital. After the call, they went to the hospital and found that all Brian’s things, except the scooter, were in his ward. They also called the police themselves, because the hospital staff did not do it.
Winnipeg Police confirmed their involvement in the search for Childs. They tracked his phone and said that he was within 500 meters of the hospital. While the police were searching the hospital building, relatives were looking for Brian on the street, fearing that he could go out and be lost.
Also, Childs’s sister stated that he was leaving the hospital building and was going outside while he was being treated. They found out it with the help of his mobile phone, which contained a message with instructions on how to get back to the hospital. He was helped by a woman living nearby when she saw that Brian was lost and did not know what to do.
The sisters also found in medical records that Brian had pneumonia, which they were not informed about.
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