A B.C. kidney patient needed care urgently enough that he was airlifted to hospital in Kelowna, but he's been stuck sleeping in a hallway ever since.
Shawn Ponte was airlifted from Cranbrook last week, but when he arrived at Kelowna General Hospital he was told that there wasn't a room for him. He was given a bed, but the facility was so full that he was set up in the hall.
"If they were so full and didn't have the room to begin with, why didn't they tell the Cranbrook hospital? And they could have sent me to a different hospital that could have taken care of me properly," he wondered.
Pointe spent five days in the hallway bed, and when the sounds of beeping machines started making him "go bonkers," he took to social media to vent his frustrations.
He posted videos to Facebook, and said that he decided to go public out of concern not just for himself, but for other patients.
"It's probably happened to other people, they just haven't had the means to get it out there. And I finally stood up for myself and said, 'Hey, enough is enough,'" he said.
"The hospital should treat their patients better."
Hospital administration called the circumstances unfortunate, and said that they try to minimize time patients are forced to stay in the halls.
"However, it shows the increased acuity and the demand for hospital care right now," the hospital's head of medical services, Andrew Hughes, told CTV News.
Hughes said Ponte's hallway stint will be the subject of a review.
While hospital staff investigates, it appears that Ponte's Facebook videos may have worked.
He was moved into a room, and says he's just looking forward to getting his operation over with so he can go back home.
With a report from CTV Vancouver's Kent Molgat
