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WARNING: This story contains mention of suicide and self-harm.
The parents of a patient who died at Health Sciences Centre are suing Shared Health, accusing it and several health-care staff members of contributing to incidents of self-harm that led to the death of their son.
Staff members at the Winnipeg hospital and the Crisis Response Centre, which is on the HSC campus, failed to exercise the standard of care in responding to a person experiencing a severe mental health crisis in May 2024, court documents say. The documents were filed as part of a publication ban application.
Anonymized copies of those documents, sent by the law firm that represents the parents in a notice to media Wednesday, say the patient was transferred to HSC after he inflicted serious harm on himself at the Crisis Response Centre.
They say two HSC nurses separately removed the two wrist restraints preventing him from leaving the care area after emergency surgery. The patient left and died by suicide inside the hospital on May 12, the documents say.
The plaintiffs accuse Crisis Response Centre staff of negligence by failing to ensure harmful objects were secured and inaccessible in the facility.
They also say the HSC nurses removed the restraints without a doctor’s order and without doing a reassessment of the situation.
The documents also name the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority, an RCMP officer and Canada’s attorney general as defendants.
They say the RCMP officer failed to arrange an involuntary psychiatric assessment of the person despite repeated pleas from the parents, with staff at the Selkirk Regional Health Centre also wrongly advising he could not be admitted to their facility because he was outside their regional health authority.
None of the claims in the filings have been tested in court.
The documents were filed with the Court of King’s Bench as part of an application seeking to ban the disclosure of the parents’ names, their family members’ names and any other information that could identify them.
The application says granting a publication ban will preserve the dignity of the plaintiffs and the deceased while preventing the risk of more trauma.
The parents are not seeking an absolute ban on public reporting on the matter, but only that their identities are not disclosed, the documents said.
The documents said the parents “personally experienced and witnessed” most of the events surrounding their son’s death, and that both have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and are undergoing treatment.
The parents said in affidavits they’re anxious about recounting the incidents should they be required to do so in court. They would be more comfortable doing so if they’re assured their identities won’t be disclosed, the documents said.
The mental health professionals who are currently treating them also said in affidavits that not concealing their identities could interfere with ongoing treatment.
The motion asks that they and their son be identified in all further documents by pseudonyms, with documents filed in support of the motion being sealed.
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