Brian Sinclair needed basic health care on a September weekend in 2008. The aboriginal man, a double amputee, sat in his wheelchair in an ER for 34 hours, waiting to have his blocked urinary catheter changed while staff ignored him. Brian Sinclair wasn’t given the care he needed, and he died because of that. Mr. Sinclair lapsed into unconsciousness in his wheelchair and died in the waiting room of Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre. He may have been dead up to seven hours before staff noticed — doctors attempted to resuscitate him before discovering rigor mortis was already setting in. This despite the pleas of other patients in the emergency ward waiting room who told hospital staff that an obviously ill Mr. Sinclair needed care. They were basically told to mind their own business. How many patients were seen while Mr. Sinclair sickened and died? That was one of the most important questions that needed to be answered at the inquest into what happened to Mr. Sinclair. But I was the only reporter to delve into it. Over the many months of hearings, I helped the public understand the issues of bed shortages, clogged emergency rooms and hospital wards, problems with the design and layout of the ER waiting room, what role racism played in Mr. Sinclair’s death and what the hospital and the regional health authority have done to ensure a death like his never happens again. But it was my story about the nearly 200 patients who were treated while a disabled, aboriginal man was not, that provided answers other media outlets did not. The document containing that information was mentioned in the hearing, and I was surprised to find myself the only reporter to ask for a copy, take the time to pore over it and unravel questions about other ER patients’ care. I figured out when 199 of them arrived and departed, what their health problem was, how serious a case the triage team deemed them, among other details. I also supplied information for a map of the ER waiting room, marked with the positions of key witnesses. This helped make Mr. Sinclair’s situation clearer to readers. My story proved that while Mr. Sinclair was ignored to death, many other patients around him received the care they needed. It forced regional health authority officials to admit that racism does exist in Manitoba’s health care system, although they stopped short of admitting it killed Mr. Sinclair. The Winnipeg Free Press — despite struggling with staff reductions as most media outlets are — committed to covering the inquest daily. The hearings were spread across several months, starting in 2013. I covered them from beginning to end, tweeting a couple of dozen times each day, filing several short stories to our website throughout the day before writing a full story for next day’s paper. We later learned how truly valuable to the medical profession my tweets and online stories were. Health care professionals and organizations across the country reported they followed the coverage on our website and in the twitterverse. In fact, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians honoured me with their 2014 CAEP Award for Medical Journalism for my earlier work on the inquest, despite the fact I hadn’t even entered the work in the competition.
