Discussion for article #244398
Shame, shame, shame. Her family is right. She should have been given the benefit of doubt. What has happened to some folksâ humanity?
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As someone who works in healthcare, with a fair amount of experience in emerg, I mostly agree but with an important distinction â staff behaviour should have been based on an objective measure of her condition (i.e. measurable vital signs!), and not subjective observations like âthis woman is a pain in the assâ, which in this case led to a faulty assumption that she was faking it. This is basically a case study in why decisions shouldnât be made without those objective measures.
Not all the details are out yet, but we do know a little more than we did when this was first reported a few days ago. The cop is probably not at fault (he was doing what the providers told him), and in his defence there is a reason the dictionary contains the term âmalingeringâ. Itâs damn common, sadly, so if the providers told him thatâs what the woman was doing, no reason he would have behaved other than he did.
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Here is the worst any society has to offer: watch one of We The People die in the street while doctors and police watch them die. Hard to believe - or once was, anyhow. I guess maybe Iâm just getting a bit cynical after decades of watching the government destroy the lives of We The People. No question that this incident is really illustrating just who Congress and the Administration are anymore: a cold, calculating heartless government. This country is no place for humans to live, only die.
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The attending physician in this case did not watch her die, as she seems to have been readmitted rapidly once her condition was reassessed shortly after he arrived. The problem is what happened before that, and the inappropriate delay in triggering any such reassessment â the other providers on scene were so certain she was malingering that no assessment seems to have been done (except taking her pulse, which doesnât really mean shit). The attending provider may have been part of that problem earlier, too â we donât know all the details yet.
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I would to believe that Justice will be served and the negligent doctor, nurses and policeman will suffer serious consequences for this- more or less- murder by gross inaction.
I would to believe it. But I donât.
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Dawson repeatedly replies, âI canât breathe.â
Our police seem to have a difficult time with this simple English phrase. Should we be requiring them to take refresher courses in basic conversation? Or should we, perhaps, teach potential victims the right numeric code in cop-talk to make sure their message gets through?
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We donât expect a cop to diagnose a pulmonary embolism but dammit. If heâs that devoid of compassion perhaps his department should reconsider his fitness to serve. This man doesnât give a shit about people.
Nice dodge by the Doc too. Yes it was exactly the same condition he discharged her for. He failed to consider it when she was in the exam room ( its an expensive DX ) so it advanced ( as embolisms always do ) to where she was in that parking lot. But for Godâs sake. You have a woman there. Put a pulse OX in her finger and a stethoscope on her back. If her O2 sats low and air is moving shes in deep trouble. This is a huge fuck up.
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Nonsense.
She clearly knew something was wrong which is why she sought treatment. This negligent Hospital doctor and staff obviously missed something and then escalated their mistakes by involving the police. They only took her back into the hospital, 18 minutes later, when they finally checked and found no pulse.
This really goes beyond simple negligence.
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Best healthcare system in the world. If youâve got the cash.
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But the policeman did in fact render a âdiagnosisâ. On the tape you can clearly hear him say ââŚ[sheâs] faking itâ.
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Itâs sortof a like this: the instant you start thinking of certain other folks as subhuman, you lose your own humanity.
We all know why this happened to her. Just look at her.
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RWNJ universe⌠âOh come nowâŚsettle down. The cop didnât shoot her. Whatsâ the problem now?â
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You seem to have high certainty about this for someone that wasnât there, given most of the details arenât out yet. 
As I mentioned when this first came out a few days ago, the providers involved had basically hope they documented the shit out of how awesome this ladyâs condition was when she was discharged, with a glowing vital signs flowsheet right up until the discharge order, or yes, this could indeed go beyond negligence and into weird/disturbing territory. However itâs that objective documentation that will decide it â with all respect you have no idea if this is the case, and thus no idea if their claims are nonsense. It is absolutely, completely possible that a woman with chronic health issues suffered some additional issue after a discharge order was given, whether or not it was related to her initial stay. It is not the Occamâs Razor version of events, and thus weâre right to be suspicious, but shit, everyone needs to understand that it IS possible.
To be clear â I donât personally believe the hospital will be able to prove this. But we all need to stay objective or weâre basically guilty of the same intellectual fallacy as the providers may have been when they thought âoh sheâs just malingeringâ â just in reverse. Objectivity = good.
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Respectfully, Iâve been following this story for several days now and have read several different accounts. I think in fact by applying Occamâs Razor itâs more likely to come to the conclusion of negligence than not.
The basic facts are damning; but the video and audio move this into egregious territory.
Case in point the Hospitalâs assertion it moved with all haste in every phase of this issue- clearly they did not. Q.E.D.
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This is exactly what conservative health care reform would look like. It would be up to the hospital whether to offer charity to patients with no means to pay, or to kick them to the curb. Hospital administrators should really rethink whether they want to be the bad guy who does the curb kicking.
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Yes thereâs no doubt they were bullshitting there! It just reeks of lawyers and/or providers themselves fearing malpractice and digging the hole deeper. Doesnât exactly fill one with confidence that the medical events in question were objective when the public follow-up (by the hospital) has not been.
I wasnât necessarily referring to the police since they were called by the medical staff. But as someone who is also involved in healthcare, I have witnessed medical staff calling security to remove uninsured patients who refuse to leave the emergency room (New York-Presbyterian hospital) until they get the care they need. And almost with fail, the person being removed would collapse outside the emergency room doors. Iâve also seen my fair share of psychotic patients so I know how difficult it is for staff to deal with a disruptive patient. Still this woman was obesity and her claims of distress should have been more fully investigated.
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wow, just wow; this is the type of country we live in;
just amazing, america the great;
land of death.
Fair enough â I admit I have very little experience with the uninsured issue (the whole Canada thing), so I guess I donât have a good handle on how often that occurs in the US except through the same reports everyone else reads.