Taking the system's PULSE

The Star spent 12 hours on the overnight shift at a Toronto ER. Here's what we saw

- KENYON WALLACE

Nurse Clare Walker, right, works on a patient potentially suffering a heart attack who was brought into the Toronto Western resuscitation room following an urgent "Code Resus."

It’s 6:37 p.m. at Toronto Western Hospital’s emergency department and Dr. Tessa Ringer is about two hours into her eight-hour shift. She has just seen her seventh patient, a senior complaining of a severe earache, and is en route to fetch some gauze and ear drops.

As she makes her way along the bright corridor of the ED’s ambulatory care section, a voice suddenly comes over the intercom calling out a “Code Resus,” the most serious and urgent medical alarm signalling to staff to drop whatever it is they are doing and head to the resuscitation room. A Code Resus is reserved for patients who need fast, life-saving interventions for conditions such as heart attack, stroke or respiratory failure.

In an instant, Ringer spins on her heels and starts running to the ED’s east side, where the resuscitation room sits next to the entrance doors to the department’s acute-patient area.

In about 10 seconds, she arrives to find an elderly patient already on the resus room stretcher in obvious distress.

The glowing sign is probably the first thing that ailing people see upon arrival at Toronto Western's emergency department.

The patient is conscious but their breathing is laboured and abnormal; their stomach rises and falls stiffly with each breath, desperately trying to push air in and out of the lungs. Their skin is a pallid grey.

One nurse is already hooking the patient up to oxygen and heart monitors, while another looks for an arm vein in which to insert an IV line.