Hospital Staff Shuns Dying Brooklyn Woman

It happens more than we probably know - patients dying in hospitals. And I'm not talking about the Grey's Anatomy, House or ER picture either, where doctors and emergency room staff are obviously overworked and despite dealing with their own personal drama put everything aside to do their damndest to give that dying patient their all. Sometimes their best isn't enough and patients die. It's difficult for the families to hear the bad news whether it's television or reality.

It's more like the apathy of hospital staff toward patients in need of medical help. In the media we've seen patients dying in the hospital because they were being ignored by the emergency room staff. Over a year ago, Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, lay bleeding on the emergency room floor at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles. Ironically, in the City of Angels there was nothing heavenly about the events that transpired at the hospital. Rodriguez was throwing up blood and the only hospital staffer to come near her was a janitor who proceeded to mop up the blood around her. After realizing that the staff was unwilling to help her two separate calls were placed to 911 to get her moved to a different hospital. One was by her boyfriend, the second by a female bystander. But the calls were made in vain because the unwillingness to help spread from the emergency room staff to the 911 dispatchers as they refused to send an ambulance to the hospital to transport Rodriguez somewhere else. She died of a perforated bowel and many experts said she would have survived had she been treated sooner.

The saga of the failing health-care system continues this time in Brooklyn's Kings County Hospital on June 19. Esmin Green, a native of Jamaica and mother of six was hospitalized previously for emotional problems. Last month, she was involuntarily admitted to the psychiatric emergency department for "agitation and psychosis." A friend of Green's, Peter Pilgrim commented that she was dealing with losing both her job at a day care center and her apartment. At Kings County, Green waited nearly 24 hours since she was admitted to receive treatment. But it came too late. Based on video surveillance, she collapsed at 5:32 a.m. on June 19 and stopped moving at 6:07 a.m. Nobody assisted her during the entire time she struggled on the floor. At 6:35 a.m., an employee did get close enough to use her foot to nudge Green. Three minutes after help came to the scene. A video of the events at Kings County's is available. What was even more disturbing was the fact that the staff falsified Green's records to cover up their lack of medical care and compassion.

A New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation's spokesperson, James Saunders stated that the seven employees involved (chief of psychiatry, chief of security, a doctor, two nurses and two security guards) were either fired or suspended. Besides the corporation's current investigation, a 2007 federal investigation is already under way demonstrating a strong need for reform at Kings County. In May 2007, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Mental Hygiene Legal Service sued Kings County in federal court, alleging that conditions were filthy and patients that complained were abused or medicated to keep them docile.

The lack of attention and professionalism at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in L.A. and Kings County in Brooklyn led to the deaths of Rodriguez and Green. The actions of those staff members in no way negate the care and hard work that some medical professionals provide to patients. However, those baffling tragedies brings to our attention the need to work harder and train medical staff better to protect patients from this type of haphazard approach to medicine. There's no reason why patients should wonder whether they will be cared for or not when they walk into the emergency room. Yes, inner-city hospitals are overcrowded, poorly funded and understaffed. But, ignoring a distressed patient is inexcusable. Having patients wait 24-hours before they are cared for is disturbing. The shocking events that have taken place at these hospitals need to stop. There's no reason why patients should be dying because they are being neglected. We have to try harder, we can be better than this.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/03/hospital.woman.death/index.html