Attack victim questions hospital's help
A 22-year-old Ontario man who suffered a violent knife attack last Sunday is questioning the help he received from health providers in Saskatoon.
The man can't be named because he was also the alleged victim of a sexual assault in the attack.
"Yeah, I'm trying to get away and he just keeps hacking me," he told CBC News. "I'm begging for my life, stop, please stop. What are you doing? Why?"
He escaped and made it two blocks before collapsing. A passerby found him and called for help.
When he got to a hospital doctors used more than 60 stitches to sew his seven stab wounds.
After his wounds were dressed and he was given some painkillers he was sent to a local shelter in a taxi. But he said he can't understand why he wasn't kept in the hospital under supervision.
"I think if I was the doctor, I would have made a, made the call to keep me there overnight at least, to monitor me, right?"
Emergency room doctors said they assess the severity of each patient's injuries and determine whether they should be admitted to hospital.
While the 22-year-old suffered stab wounds, his injuries were not life threatening.
Doctors said they also talk to patients before they're discharged.
"We should be able to discuss with the patient where the wounds are, what the appropriate treatment would be for follow-up, when the stitches should come out, when they should see their family doctor," said James Stempien, a doctor works in the emergency rooms in Saskatoon.
"If they don't have access to a family doctor, what they can do to get their sutures out. How to take care of the wounds afterwards."
Stempien said that sometimes traumatized patients simply don't remember what they were told in the emergency room.
The victim of the attack told CBC News he had been drinking that afternoon. He said he was also traumatized by the attack, so his memories of the emergency room are fragmented.
He said that would have been all the more reason he should have been kept at the hospital.
