{"id":191245,"date":"2025-10-05T11:40:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T11:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/191245\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T11:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T11:40:19","slug":"video-one-familys-reality-of-the-chaos-in-royal-university-hospital-hallway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/191245\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO: One family\u2019s reality of the chaos in Royal University Hospital hallway"},"content":{"rendered":"

When video footage from Saskatoon\u2019s Royal University Hospital first appeared online in late September<\/a>, it stunned people across the province.<\/p>\n

The short clip, filmed Sept. 25 and published below, showed stretchers pressed against walls, nurses dodging rolling beds, and patients packed so tightly into corridors that there was barely room to pass.<\/p>\n

Within days, it had been viewed more than 100,000 times, drawing outrage and disbelief.<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/p>\n

The Saskatchewan Health Authority quickly issued a statement saying the images reflected \u201can unprecedented level of demand\u201d on emergency rooms. But for one Unity family, the pictures were d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n

(Video and captions by Lynn Harmon. 650 CKOM blurred the faces of the people in the video to protect their identity.)<\/p>\n

Weeks after the clip spread online, the NDP facilitated a one-on-one conversation between CJME and Tim Lang, whose 82-year-old mother had spent three days in a Royal University Hospital hallway under the same conditions.<\/p>\n

Lang still remembers the day everything started.<\/p>\n

\u201cMonday, Sept. 22, around noon, my mother had a stroke,\u201d he said. \u201cWe called the ambulance. They picked her up and took her straight to North Battleford Union Hospital for a CT scan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctors there reviewed the images and contacted the neurology department in Saskatoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018Bring her in right away by ambulance,\u2019 because they couldn\u2019t tell the damage on the CT,\u201d Lang said.<\/p>\n

Lang\u2019s mother had survived a stroke six years earlier, so doctors needed an MRI to separate new damage from old.<\/p>\n

By that evening, the family was following an ambulance east on Highway 16.<\/p>\n

\u2018People lined up in hallways\u2019<\/p>\n

When they arrived at RUH, Lang said the reality of the province\u2019s busiest emergency department became clear almost immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey parked her in the hallway right in front of the nurse\u2019s station,\u201d Lang said. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe it, people (were) lined up in the hallways like you wouldn\u2019t believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every room was packed. Curtains divided patients where walls should have been. Stretchers were tucked into any space that could hold them.<\/p>\n

Lang said nurses were doing their best, checking vitals and trying to comfort patients. Still, the sheer number of people made even small things feel impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told her to use a bedpan, which she refused,\u201d Lang said. \u201cShe said, \u2018I\u2019m not using a bedpan, get me up so I can sit on a toilet.\u2019 They brought a commode in for her, let her do her business, and that was fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that moment of dignity didn\u2019t last.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe needed the washroom again later, and the nurse basically said, \u2018You\u2019re not strong enough to get up, you have to use a bedpan,\u2019 which she refused again,\u201d Lang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018No, you can\u2019t get out of bed, we\u2019ll have to put a catheter in you.\u2019 She totally refused and fought tooth and nail. After about two hours of fighting, they finally gave her some Ativan (medication) to settle her down so they could put a catheter in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang and his wife stayed with his mother late into the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe left around 1:30 a.m. because she\u2019d finally settled down,\u201d he said. \u201cI gave the nurse my number and told them to call if she woke up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patients just never stopped coming<\/p>\n

When he came back at dawn, his mother was still in the hallway.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was awake and with it that morning, remembered things, doing fairly well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent most of the day with her watching what I\u2019d call the gong show in the emergency room.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said there seemed to be more security staff than janitors, and the number of patients coming through the doors never stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe security in that RUH was just amazing trying to keep the riff-raff out of the hospital there.\u201d<\/p>\n

That night, Lang tucked his mother in around 10 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was fine that night, settled down,\u201d he said. He left his phone number again and returned to the hotel.<\/p>\n

When he came back at 6 a.m. the next morning, her bed was gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought right away, \u2018Oh, she must have got a room,\u2019 \u201d he said. \u201cI went to the nurse\u2019s station and asked where she was. The nurse said, \u2018Who are you talking about?\u2019 and handed me a phone number to call.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he began to protest, another staff member overheard him. \u201cHe said, \u2018You\u2019re looking for Mrs. Lang? Follow me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang followed the staff member through a set of double doors and into another corridor, the main artery connecting the emergency department to the rest of the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat hallway is lined with beds, wall to wall,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople come in and out, food carts, oxygen tanks, stretchers. It\u2019s just a constant flow.\u201d<\/p>\n

There, between the flow of traffic, he found his mother\u2019s bed.<\/p>\n

\"Soiled<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim Lang\u2019s mothers bed was parked outside a room labelled \u201csoiled room,\u201d which he said smelled bad. (Tim Lang\/Submitted)<\/p>\n

Chaos spills over to hallways<\/p>\n

\u201cShe hadn\u2019t slept all night,\u201d Lang said. \u201cShe told me she asked for water three or four times and never got any. She said, \u2018There\u2019s so many people around here. It stinks, it really smells.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across from her was a door marked Soiled Room.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe smell coming out of there was bad,\u201d he said. \u201cThe floor was dirty. Sheets were thrown down. It wasn\u2019t clean at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noticed a therapy dog with a handler making rounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dog peed on the floor,\u201d Lang said. \u201cThey threw a sheet over it and everyone walked over it for about two hours before somebody finally picked it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was one of the only times he saw anyone attempt to clean.<\/p>\n

\"Therapy<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim Lang said a therapy dog peed on the floor in the corridor and was left for two hours. (Tim Lang\/Submitted)<\/p>\n

\u201cIn three days, I saw one dry mop go down that hallway,\u201d he said. \u201cDidn\u2019t mop around the beds or anything, just the main walkway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang said the noise of the ER never stopped, with IV stands rattling, monitors beeping, stretchers bumping the walls.<\/p>\n

\u201cBetween 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. I counted 55 people went by her bed,\u201d he said. \u201cThe next morning, between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., 172 people went by. Food trays, oxygen tanks, patients going for scans, just constant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang said the bedside table, which held her food and water, was touched \u201cprobably 100 times a day\u201d by people squeezing past.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn three days that table never did get wiped,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Bedside<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim Lang said his mother\u2019s bedside table, which held her food and water, was touched \u201cprobably 100 times a day\u201d by people squeezing past. (Tim Lang\/Submitted)<\/p>\n

Sleep, he said, was impossible for his mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was up all night, every night. They kept saying they\u2019d get her a drink of water and never did. She was exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang said after nearly three days in the hallway, a neurologist ordered an MRI, but it almost didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey almost cancelled it because somebody forgot the order,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer neurologist happened to walk by. I hollered her back and told her they were going to cancel it. She said, \u2018no way.\u2019 She got the Ativan ordered and they did it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That night, his mother was moved upstairs to a room on the sixth floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe finally got some sleep, had a meal, and you could see her settle down,\u201d Lang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said, \u2018I think I\u2019m in heaven.\u2019 She done a 180-spin in a matter of eight hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang said it was the first time in days his mother had been able to stand up and walk to the bathroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey got her up, got her cleaned, and she just looked like a different person,\u201d he said. \u201cShe looked alive again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Signs of strain at RUH<\/p>\n

Even then, the family saw signs of how strained the hospital had become.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s two banks of two elevators in that hospital,\u201d Lang said. \u201cTwo of them were out of order, and the other two were loaded down with everybody, staff, patients, visitors, stretchers.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said one nurse told him an elevator had been broken for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said one\u2019s been out a couple of years, the other a couple of weeks,\u201d Lang said. \u201cJust no care in there at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through it all, Lang said he never blamed the front-line staff. He wants more support for those with mental health and addiction issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the ER department, in my opinion, they are overloaded with mental health issues and substance abuse,\u201d Lang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re working flat out, but the system\u2019s overloaded \u2026 there\u2019s just no room left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang said he saw the toll it took on both patients and workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to go and experience it yourself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lang\u2019s mother was eventually transferred back to Unity, where she\u2019s been recovering.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never think it\u2019s going to happen to you, that your mom\u2019s going to be lying in a hallway like that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ll never forget.\u201d<\/p>\n

SHA blames staff shortages, early flu season<\/p>\n

The Saskatchewan Health Authority said the viral video and stories like Lang\u2019s reflect the pressures staff are facing across the province.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the SHA said hospitals are \u201cimplementing operational measures to manage patient flow and ensure care continues safely.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Ash, the SHA\u2019s vice-president for integrated Saskatoon health, said at one point RUH had 42 patients waiting for inpatient beds. He cited staff shortages, an early flu season and ongoing capacity challenges.<\/p>\n

Ash said the province\u2019s March announcement of 109 new acute-care beds for Saskatoon City Hospital, with 20 already open, was part of the plan to help reduce pressure on emergency departments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know these pressures are felt by both patients and staff,\u201d the SHA said. \u201cOur teams are doing everything they can to provide safe, timely care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang said he believes that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re trying,\u201d he said. \u201cThey just don\u2019t have enough. Nobody should have to go through that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When video footage from Saskatoon\u2019s Royal University Hospital first appeared online in late September, it stunned people across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-191245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}