The Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus — Attraction in Ottawa

First, I will explain that a little incident I had on 31 Oct 2017 around 1900hrs.

While performing recreational music, I started noticing that my right hand not working properly, and I realized that there was a very numbing sensation in the fingers. At first, I thought the arm fell asleep, so I did some stretches. I started noticing that my entire right side of my body is feeling very numb, and I am having trouble co-ordinating my right hand, i.e. dropping everything. I also asked some of my neighbours and they said I am stuttering, which is abnormal to me.

After the problem did not subside for a few minutes, I called Ontario Health Care line and described my symptoms. The nurse on the hotline insisted on calling 911, or at the very least for me to be admitted at nearest Emergency room, well, Ottawa Civic Campus is the nearest ER to where I live.

When I arrived, I was quite disoriented, and I had a very bad nausea, and I spoke to the information desk to help me, who told me in words where I could get to. Let me repeat, I was disoriented, and I asked the staff again to guide me to registration and they did.

I was seen by a triage nurse rather quickly, who must've noticed my stuttering and asked me if my first language is English, it is not. I suppose that was enough to dismiss the stuttering as lacking in language proficiency. I've been speaking English for over 15 years, and I teach in English.

I was put into a room later on, where I was seen by this nurse, who spent about 20 minutes asking for my medical history, and current symptoms.

About an hour later a doctor came into the room, and said "Oh, so this is you, I just went into a wrong room, and looked for the symptom 'weakness'". The doctor even showed me what the nurse wrote down. One word, "weakness".

This nurse must have been on some form of drugs!

After the doctor tried to diagnose me, he said he needs to speak to his staff and 2 hours passed.

I had to go to the bathroom, and when I came back to the room, the same nurse from before was in the room to bring another patient into the room. I sat in the hallway, in my head wondering "what is going on?" Eventually I found the doctor I saw, and I asked him if I can be discharged yet. He asked me to go back to the room. He came to me eventually, and told me that he doesn't believe that there was a stroke, or an acute life threatening issue, and asked me to see a general doctor.

The next day, I did speak to a GD and went to the ER in Ottawa General hospital. They couldn't believe that ER in civics discharged me without CT scan or MRI scan.

Thankfully, at least from proper diagnosis, I did not have a major stroke. I am not under life threatening ilness right now, but I still have numbness, co-ordinatin issues in right hand and light stutter

Should this have been any more serious, I'm certain that I would not be capable writing such review, because I would have died or permanently brain damaged in front of very confused nurses and doctor in the ER in civics hospital.

I request, for the sake of any patient in emergency, do train your doctor and nurse who is assigned to the ER better.

I don't care about the wait time, because yes, it is an emergency room, but I question competency of one doctor, and one nurse at the very least.

They seem to have the mindset of "assume it's nothing, and everything is normal, and not pay attention to the patient"

I do wish to apologize to an operator that I yelled at on 1 Nov 2017, because he advised me to go to the ER for the symptoms. I screamed at him saying "What the F are they going to do for me? If there was brain damage, it's already permanent!"

I will leave my full name, and contact information privately. --This keeps on...

UPDATE 2: Following my complaints to the CPSO and the hospital Dr. Clancy began going through my online accounts. I haven't used my Linkedin account in several years and suddenly in the last 90 days someone has looked at my profile twice. That person was Dr. Aisling Clancy. After the second time she then went through my husband's profile as well. While the accounts are public and this is not illegal, it is incredibly unprofessional. The CPSO has guidelines advising physicians to avoid conflicts of interest as well as not seeking out online information without prior consent. Given the vindictive and bullying nature of Dr. Clancy's behaviour during my labour and delivery this further violation absolutely goes against those guidelines. The Ottawa Civic hospital needs to start training their doctors to better follow the standards of ethics. Dr. Clancy is certainly failing to do so.

Original Review: Terrible experience. Awful place to give birth. Nurses were great but call ahead and find out what Dr. is on call in Labour and Delivery before going. If its Dr. Aisling Clancy go somewhere else. She is negative and rude and does not respect her patients. She (and the hospital) are more concerned with hospital protocol than individual circumstances and patient consent. I had twins and after extensive research and with the support of my OB and midwives I chose not to have an epidural. At one point Dr. Clancy leaned over my bed and told me I was making her a failure as an OB for refusing the epidural. She refused to let me use the shower, or the birth bar because they would make her job harder. She refused to let me hold my first baby ( apgar 9/9 and second twin did not come right away) she said that it would get in her way. It was like she was punishing me for not doing as I was told. After 30 minutes she told me I needed a c section for baby 2 ( this is protocol) but there was no sign of distress in me or the baby so I refused. ten minutes later she said the cord was prolapsed. Apparently on the way to OR the cord was pushed back behind baby's head and there had been no change in heart rate and he had shown no signs of distress but Dr. Clancy did not tell me this. She used the emergency to get me to consent to a c section. She used fear based communication and tried to scare me into consenting to interventions she wanted and with-held information when that didnt work.If you want to have any opinion about your care or do not agree 100% with Dr's orders this is NOT the place for you. Also very poor follow up after delivery. The only thing any of the doctors said to me after the c section was "Don't have any more kids for 18 months". After that I saw a Dr. who hadn't even been in the delivery, once for thirty seconds and when I had more questions and asked to speak to someone before I was discharged no one came. Once you've had the baby they don't have time for your concerns or questions.

UPDATE: I contacted patient relations as I was told to do. In response to my negative experience they said congratulations and thank you for your feed back. I had to email them two more times in order to actually have someone take my complaint seriously. It took three and half months to speak to anyone and when I did they defended Dr. Clancy's behavior and called her a "strong communicator" I reported Dr. Clancy to the CPSO. This is now on her permanent record. However it is considered a "minor complain" since it was about her communication and didn't involve any medical issues so is not public. I strongly encourage anyone who has been treated similarly by a doctor to complain to the CPSO. Treating patients this way goes against the standards of...

The trend is that whenever I have the misfortune of having to come here, at least two nurses are going to treat me like a statue made of manure. Some nurses in the ER, like the nurse named Ming, are very kind and have a heart. I can just hope that such kind people are not corrupted by their colleagues with absolutely miserable attitudes, I guess due to management issues and toxic work culture, not to mention sick people who understandably can be very cranky due to pain. Especially triage and “urgent” “care”. This time it took more than half a day (12 hours) to get seen for sudden chest pain and high blood pressure. I know it doesn’t matter one iota to most of them if I die, but they could at least pretend to care. The doctor I saw this time was the polar opposite of the miserable night nurses (except for the one who was wearing a black sweater who was more patient with people). He was very good humoured and understood me very well. Four of the Night Shift nurses were positively acting as if I didn’t exist by the end of the shift.

On 16/02/2023 I had the misfortune of coming here with my 5th concussion at roughly 1:30am and the triage nurse with dyed black hair and a rainbow laniard was the most horrifically cruel person I have ever met. She should be fired for the way she talks to males in particular. She was much nicer to the women who spoke to her. I was only kind to her and said nothing in retaliation to her abusive callousness. Very horrible experience causing me to reduce my review to to two stars. What the people and patients talking to her did to deserve her miserable treatment escapes me. One of the most vile people I have ever seen in my life inside or outside any hospital. Mis-triaged me so I was dry-heaving from the concussion symptoms for 9 hours before I got help. Dr. Connolly was very kind when I finally got seen. system.

Update 08/2016: My father went to the Civic ER with worsening abdominal pain for two months and total inability to eat. The doctor this time unfortunately didn't provide sufficient assessment; the doctor only told him to "go home and try Aleve". My father was always poor at expressing himself. We then saw a doctor at the General Campus ER just last night, who immediately saw something was wrong, ordered the abdominal CT and quickly found what they at that time thought were two adrenal tumours which were later determined to be other problems (esophageal cancer). I don't understand what happened this time at the Civic ER, but for them to miss a cancer with clear symptoms like inability to eat and chest pain with weakness and paleness is shockingly unbelievable (as mentioned it was esophageal cancer). I know everyone is human but this cost him precious treatment windows. It did disturb me once when I was told by a Dr. Woo at the Civic ER that "we don't look for cancer here".

05/2016: Unfortunately today I was mistakenly told by a resident that my problem "isn't even a thing". My history was unusual this time, but I would have hoped for deeper dialogue and connection to drill down. I then had to go to the ER in Hull and found out I had mallory-weiss tears and am receiving treatment. If you are at the Civic ER and get stuck with a resident who doesn't seem to understand, politely ask to see...