Monday, April 13, 2009

Today: Driedger finds HSC had nurse shortage while Brian Sinclair was dying; FP exposes hospital superbug epidemic; Glesby death investigation news

Thanks to all our listeners and readers for your response to our ongoing coverage of the Gail Glesby case. Please consider joining the Facebook page "The Fight for Gail Glesby" to support the family and help bring other cases like hers forward.

On Good Friday, we replayed our findings of her mistreatment at Health Sciences Centre culled from official hospital records, as well as replaying our interview with her sister about the effect on the family.

Today we will have more news about the Glesby story- as well as following up on Tom Brodbeck's column "Shortage of Truth" that ran yesterday in the Winnipeg Sun.

Tom's analysis of the discovery by the provincial Conservative caucus that serious nursing shortages were concurrent to the death of Brian Sinclair at HSC's emergency room is very disturbing. Charleswood MLA and opposition Health Critic Myrna Driedger (at 4.10 PM) will explain the full details of the documentation she got in response to her Freedom of Information Request, and her opinion of how the government handled the aftermath of the death in light of this latest find. Brodbeck says Health Minister Theresa Oswald was wrong to claim the nursing allotment was adequate for a Friday in the core area emergency room and had nothing do do with Sinclair being untreated for 34 hours.

We'll also ask Driedger about today's Free Press story detailing rampant superbug epidemics in local hospitals. Jen Skerritt filed her own FOI on the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and forced them to make public statistics that are commonly provided the public in the rest of the country. We have our own insight into the curious gaps in the information Skerritt was provided - and our theory about what prevented the newspaper from paying the $900 fee demanded by the WRHA to hand over crucial details about treatment outcomes (which is the fancy way of saying, how long were patients, doctors, nurses, hospital staff or others sick, or if any of them, say, DIED.)

Also after 4.30, we'll read more of the FP comments thread and the scathing reaction to Gord Sinclair's "our internet readers are mean to me and I want to know who they are" bleat from last week, and to boot, a special Lesson in Journalism about his Saturday column that you won't want to miss.

Today's show is book-ended by two other special features:
- CTV's Susan Tymofichuk will open the show at 4.04 and tell all about how the New Kids On The Block concert was so fabulous she got to touch one of them! and how Leah Hextall missed a sportscast with laryngitis from cheering.
- At 5.20, the King of Corydon Avenue Frank the Italian Barber will have his Stanley Cup playoff predictions (he's betting on the Devils). We'll also discuss new details in the ongoing Major League baseball steroid scandal and about the drunk driver who killed Angel's pitcher Nick Adenhart last week.

Tomorrow: Scott Taylor of Citi-Fm will tell us why Frank's playoff predictions are wrong :)
Wednesday: Rocky Moudgill, Executive DirectorWinnipeg Youth Soccer Association Inc, www.winnipegyouthsoccer.com, at 5.10 PM
Thursday: Jack A. King, senior partner of Petersen King. A Family law practitioner for over 20 years, at 4.15 PM
On Monday, April 27th at 4 PM, live in studio, Mayor Sam Katz answering our 311 horror stories, Disraeli funding questions and more.

(And a reminder we now hail from the new continent the Free Press discovered last Friday. I say "discovered" because surely, if it was an error, it would have been corrected by now. Hail Aurtarlia! )