On January 28th I went to the Emergency Department at the Royal Victoria Hospital to check my sight, since I had realized that recently I was suffering a distorted vision when reading. The first thing I said to the nurse is that in the past I had gone through two surgeries due to rethina detachment in both eyes. Due to this specific circumstance, I had been strongly advised by my doctors in Spain to immediately go to an emergency sevice should I ever experience any problem in my sight. After 8 hours waiting, Dr. Jean Su finally concluded that I should visit the McGill Academic Eye Centre the next day. At this point, I was astonished since nobody dilated my pupils to check the back of my eyes as is customary to identify whether a rethina detachment has taken place. Moreover, I left the emergency department after paying $995.45 ($695.45 of Emergency Fees and $300 of Doctors’ Fees) without any valid conclusion about my problem.

The next day I visited the McGill Academic Eye Centre as prescribed. First of all, I explained my situation to the Administrative staff and they clarified to me that since there is not any ophthalmology department at the Royal Victoria Hospital my case should have been transferred to the emergency department of other hospitals providing this service in Montreal. After such an explanation, given the importance of my sight problem, the doctors in this clinic properly checked my eyes and gave me a subsequent appointment for June 18th for a revision.

All that said, I want to raise a complaint to the Emergency Services of Royal Victoria Hospital since they behaved as if they were competent to handle my case when they perfectly knew from the very beginning that my case required the services of an ophthalmologist which are not available at this hospital. Moreover, I consider that making me pay almost $1000 for useless services is highly unethical not only from the economic viewpoint but also from a human perspective. Therefore, I demand an apology letter and the reimbursement of the aforementioned amount of money.