July 12, 2008
More Than Neglect in Kings County Patient's Death
The City Medical Examiner released the results of Esmin Green's autopsy; and King's County Hospital treatment, or lack thereof, of the dead woman may have had more to do with her death than callous neglect. The M.E. found that Green collapsed after blood clots that formed in her legs as she sat in the hospital's psychiatric ward waiting room migrated to her lungs and killed her.
Green was seated in the reception area, waiting to be seen for approximately 24 hours before she collapsed. Hospital personnel walked past her without offering assistance for an hour before someone checked her condition.
The lawyer for Green's family, which is suing the hospital for $25 million, claimed that if an anti-coagulation drug had been administered as the patient was suffering convulsions on the floor of the waiting room as indifferent hospital employees walked past her, the 49-year-old woman could have survived. Green suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, the illness that brought her to Kings County Hospital in the first place.
Deep vein thrombosis is a condition that sometimes strikes people who sit in stationary positions for long periods of time. It is often associated with airline passengers, but in 2003 it caused the death of embedded NBC news correspondent David Bloom in Iraq.
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And perhaps if she wasn't waiting in a seated position for 24 hours, those clots would not have formed.
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Just what were they doing for those 24 hours anyway? It doesn't look like the waiting room was all that crowded. I can understand a bit of a wait if it was busy, but it looks like a ghost town in that photo.
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hmmm.. 25 million cut out of the budget. this will really help the hospital provide better service to patients.
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Please tell me that ignoring a dying woman for hours *in a hospital* and failing to supply drugs that would have saved her life now makes it some kind of murder? I just can't understand why nobody would offer help especially *when it's their job*.
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While the $25 million lawsuit is a lot of money, it's unfortunate that such a large amount--and this death--is what it takes for some hospitals to take notice and shape up. It's utterly discouraging to think people coming to a hospital are treated like this.
In LA, a woman was dying in the ER waiting area, throwing up blood, and staffers didn't do anything, so her husband and another witness both called 911. The dispatchers said nothing could be done because they were already at a hospital. The hospital called the police, claiming the sick woman was causing a disturbance, so the police came to pick her up, and she died during the transfer.
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These people probably thought the woman had just been there so long that she was tired and was just getting some sleep on the floor. You just have to love the security guard who's too lazy to even get out of his chair, just rolling it out then back. Yeah, he'd be useful in an emergency.
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I hope the security personnel are issued motorized scooters so they don't have to expend too much energy while looking at and then ignoring dying patients. The city could apply for a LEED certificate for reducing the energy expended. Where's my carbon tax rebate, bitch?
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I understand how hospital personnel might become jaded and indifferent to patients in a NYC psychiatric ward, but this is so beyond the pale it's disgusting. The link Jen provided to the case of the LA woman who was ignored as she vomited blood in the waiting area (and a janitor cleaned around her!) is equally appalling.
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Wow. This has to be a concern for anybody who waits seemingly forever at an E.R. Think about it, they triage new arrivals by how emergent their symptoms appear to be. So this poor lady was shunted aside for hours and hours as other patients were seen first. The sad irony is that those others probably left the E.R. in improved condition while she lay dying. Every hospital needs to wake up to this and place time limits on waits for everybody. Expect an avalanche of similar lawsuits across the country.
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VIGIL FOR MS. GREEN 7/25/06
FOR DETAILS
www.theopalproject.org/vigil/html.
WE THE PEOPLE
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