Ontario nurse calls recent patient deaths in Canada a ‘systemic failure’ of health-care system
An Ontario nurse is sounding off on the state of health-care systems across the country after a man recently died in an Edmonton emergency room, and a woman died of cancer on Christmas after waiting almost two years for a diagnosis.
Amie Archibald-Varley is an award-winning registered nurse who is popular across social media and hosts the top nursing podcast in Canada, The Gritty Nurse Podcast. She has been vocal about a recent incident in which an Edmonton man, Prashant Sreekumar, died while waiting to receive care in the Grey Nuns Community Hospital emergency room.
“It has become this very normalized situation where people are crying out in pain in the emergency department, and reassessments aren’t being done. People aren’t being checked in on,” Archibald-Varley said in an interview with Now Toronto on Friday.
Archibald-Varley is also a nursing and health equity advocate and CEO of healthcare consultancy firm Advancing Health Equity, Together. She shared that according to reports, while Sreekumar was waiting, he went to seek help multiple times, saying that he was experiencing a 15/10 on the pain scale.
“There were reports of him being very nauseous, continually going to let them know that he was in pain,” she explained, adding that the patient experienced a cardiac event and died soon after.
“He’s 44, classic chest pain, and he waited for eight hours until he was seen, and it was too late by then,” she said.
She felt compelled to post about his death because of her advocacy work for quality improvement in emergency departments.
“I’ve seen these things happen, and they should never happen, but it was startling for me as a nurse, because chest pain is one of those things you hear, and instantaneously, there are so many different things that we do. So, we’ll do the ECG, we’ll do blood work, usually CTAs, too. It requires prompt assessment.”
She shared that as a nurse, it’s troubling to hear that we are in a time when professionals can walk past someone crying out in pain or ignore their cries.
“I just felt horrible for that mom, that wife, because he leaves three children behind, and I think that we as a system have to do better.”
“A SYSTEMIC FAILURE”
In her social media post, the health equity advocate calls Sreekumar’s death a systemic failure and highlights the fact that Alberta’s health-care system has previously acknowledged systemic bias and racism within their ranks.
“So, it would not surprise me if race was a factor in the way that this individual was treated,” she said, explaining that racialized patients, especially South Asian and Black men, often have their cardiac symptoms dismissed or downplayed,” Archibald-Varley said in the video she posted.
“When we ‘other’ patients, we stop seeing humanity, and we only see a busy waiting room. Systemic racism kills people.”
She told Now Toronto that it’s important to remember this happened in Alberta, where Bill 13: The Regulated Professions Neutrality Act is limiting professionals’ ability to talk about equity, diversity and inclusion.
“Which is crazy, when one of the things that we do need to talk about is equity and anti-racism in health care. Because as much as people don’t want to talk about biases, racism is a social determinant of health,” she explained, adding that not discussing the issue doesn’t stop it from happening.
The Canadian Nurses Association has warned that Bill 13 undermines equity, ethics, and safe patient care.
“We have to do something. This can’t be the status quo,” Archibald-Varley said on Friday.
HEALTH CARE CRISIS: LOOKING ACROSS CANADA
Archibald-Varley is based in Ontario, and she says the situation here is not much different, referencing 16-year-old hockey player Finlay van der Werken, who died after waiting eight hours to be seen in Oakville’s E.R. in 2024.
Emergency medicine is not the only area with extended wait times, just like Ontario and Alberta are not the only provinces impacted by the issue. Mandy Wood, a Nova Scotia radio broadcaster, died on Christmas Day 2025 of vulvar cancer after waiting for nearly two years for a diagnosis.
“These are horrifying stories. If we’re waiting this long for treatment, and we’re dying in EDS, or we’re getting these delayed diagnoses, then we’re doing a disservice to the model of public health care and primary health care in Canada,” Archibald-Varley explained. “If we can’t meet the needs of the people, I think that we’re in a dire situation here.”
She also pointed fingers at Ontario Premier Doug Ford, saying that while he campaigned on improving health care in Ontario, little has changed – and what has changed has been for the worse.
“I haven’t heard much about what some of the changes are. We talk about opening up more beds, but… we can’t just open more beds if we can’t retain nurses at the bedside, or if we can’t find doctors to service rural areas,” she said. “I think that there has to be much more done. And I don’t think Doug Ford taking a vacation till March is a good thing. He should be working on health care.”
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The nurse also raised concerns about the idea that the way to address the health care issue in Canada is to look towards privatization, saying that governments have to be held accountable for not doing more.
“We have to hold them accountable for not doing the things that they should be doing to ensure that everyone has public access, timely access, quality of care when it comes to emergency departments or primary health care,” she shared, adding that governments are not going far enough.
“They are dismantling the health-care system because there are profits to be made from health care. We’ve heard about it in the States,” Archibald-Varley explained. “I believe that truly we are, we should be fighting for better publicly funded health care, and we need to hold our leaders accountable, particularly our governments. Our provincial governments can do much more.”
A GoFundMe has been set up to support Sreekumar’s family following his death, which has raised more than $175,000 as of publication.
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