Posted on 04/20/2023 7:54:08 PM PDT by Morgana
— A Wisconsin couple filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a Catholic hospital which gave a dangerous combination of drugs to their daughter and then refused to resuscitate her shortly before her death.
Grace Schara, a 19-year old with Down syndrome, died at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (Ascension Health) in October 2021 after being administered a sedative, an anxiety medication, and morphine, which are known to hasten severe hypoxia when taken together, according to the lawsuit.
Grace was already sedated on maximum doses of Precedex the morning before her death when she was given Lorazepam, which “can increase the risk of serious or life-threatening breathing problems … if used along with other sedative medications.”
Grace was finally administered 2 mg of morphine about 25 minutes after her last dose of Lorazepam, according to the timeline documented by her family. The package insert for morphine warns that using it in conjunction with other drugs she had been given “may result in profound sedation, respiratory depression, coma, and death.”
The family shared that as she “slipped into acute respiratory failure and Grace’s sister begged for help, instead of starting CPR immediately, the nurses refused,” since Grace’s doctor had unilaterally labeled her as a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR), despite lack of written consent from her family.
State law requires that a patient’s health care agent sign written consent for DNR status and that such patients must wear a DNR bracelet. Neither was carried out in Grace’s case.
“The first time we knew Grace was labeled DNR was when we were screaming for the nurses to do something and reverse the morphine given to Grace. Their response, ‘She’s DNR,’ was their excuse for not helping her,” Schara recounted to LifeSiteNews. “They stood outside her door instead.”
The lawsuit alleges that Grace died because of a “lethal cocktail of drugs” and a “fraudulent DNR order,” due to “negligence” and “non consensual treatment” from health care professionals.
Scott and Cindy Schara have since been fighting to get Grace’s cause of death listed as gross negligence and are now suing in the hopes of helping other families of deceased who have died “needless” deaths after being denied the right to informed consent.
“We are hopeful this lawsuit will pave the way for thousands of other hospital victims’ families to file similar claims,” said Scott Schara in a statement. “This is not a case about financial repercussions. It is a case about shining light on a subject hidden from the American people. It is about stopping the behaviors of medical staff that result in needless, premature deaths.”
Scott and Cindy Schara say that from the start, hospital staffers criticized the family’s rejection of the COVID-19 vaccines and their acceptance of early treatment protocols recommended by the group America’s Frontline Doctors.
The staff also had Scott removed from the hospital after he turned off the alarms in her room to help her sleep when staff repeatedly disregarded his requests to have the alarms only sound off at the nurse’s station, and initially refused to give Grace’s sister Jessica access to Grace’s room as her patient advocate.
Before going public, the family submitted a detailed summary of Grace’s story and supporting research to the hospital as well as “a request to meet with the CEO and the doctor involved,” according to the family, recognizing “their ethical and Biblical responsibility to give both of them the opportunity to discuss their perspectives. The hospital response was a refusal to meet.”
On December 19, the Scharas released an update via their newsletter detailing state authorities’ disinterest in getting to the bottom of the case. They say they requested that the Wisconsin Department of Safety & Professional Services (DSPS), Department of Health Services (DHS), and Department of Justice (DOJ) all investigate different aspects under their respective purviews, but none found wrongdoing.
A January 20, 2022, letter from DSPS claims that a “screening panel made up of members of the regulatory authority for the profession and/or a department attorney” had “conducted a thorough review of the treatment records” but “did not find a violation of minimal competency standards in the care rendered.”
“They are not interested in the uncovering of facts but are concerned about protecting doctors and hospitals,” Schara said of state officials. “When the investigative body is protecting the institutions they’re supposed to be investigating, there can be no justice. This is a system rife with conflicts of interest propagated by the government itself through its COVID bonuses and monetization program where hospitals are rewarded for COVID deaths.”
Grace herself was admitted to St. Elizabeth Hospital five days after testing positive for COVID-19.
“The system is corrupt from top to bottom,” Scott contends. “Patient care isn’t the priority of these medical institutions — profit is their priority.
I agree. This is a CF and there is a lot of missing detail. I will try to look up the lawsuit complaint.
Threaten to end someone's career. It's that simple. This isn't 1776.
The original Milgram experiment used:
Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must continue.
Now we have the "or else." Continue or forfeit your medical career. There isn't even a need for a "continue or go to jail, continue or be shot."
See www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html#Milgram’s-Agency-Theory
I’m a frequent flier patient - I visit ER’s and am admitted to hospitals numerous times a year for various health issues and things like this keep me up at night. I’ve been in and out of health care as both patient and worker, and giving someone all of those meds while they have breathing difficulty is stupid, stupid, stupid. Hands-down. This coming from a pharmacy tech who has also been on all of those drugs at some point.
I have the knowledge to advocate for myself, and I told my husband that if I wind up with COVID in the hospital and docs want to push the FDA recommended treatments, send me to hospice. There they’ll give me whatever I want, and my docs know me well enough to go along with it.
The business with the DNR is mortifying. There needs to be a family approval of the order, from the POA or guardians, and not just a doctor who, for all we know, may be a eugenecist if he approved that diaphragm-paralyzing cocktail and then ordered that girl DNR.
Her sister may also be acting as the advocate because she’s familiar with care and routine, and the parents may not have wanted to go into the hospital of they were older and possibly unwell, worried about catching COVID. I advocated for a friend after his back surgery, and for my grandmother when my mom (POA) wasn’t available, but that was rare.
I get that the nurses were covering their asses - even if someone has, “I AM DNR” pinned to their shirt or tattoed on their body, that is enough in some areas to not act, especially if medical records and family can’t be located for whatever reason, or identity can’t be established. That wasn’t the case here, but with how things were during COVID chaos, I imagine they wanted to keep their jobs, and what the docs say at those hospitals goes. Politics and such. The lawsuit against the hospital and doctor is well-deserved.
Truth!
It’s horrible that the DNR order was issued without the family’s consent! Evil!
I caught that too. Nobody should touch any buttons in a hospital room. I agree on the DNR unless the adult patient gave the ok which is possible. I think they will lose this lawsuit.
Au contraire...
For anyone else curious, WI law on the subject of advance directives...
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/154/III/17/4
This is a fraught subject, one that most people do not understand. There are some conditions that make the heart stop which are reversible some of the time with CPR and drugs. A heart attack is the king of these. Let’s score that 100 points.
Then there are conditions that are never reversible -decapitating injury, for example. Let’s score that a zero.
All the other medical conditions are on a sliding scale of reversibility. And all of them used to be “scored”, and an appropriate resusscitation priority assigned, by personal physicians.
Two big changes have taken personal physicians out of hospitals, and family members are now routinely asked, “what do you want”?
So now, the physician making the decisions doesn’t know the patient, and families don’t know him. This usually results in asking “What do you want done about CPR for a GI bleeder losing blood faster than it can be transfused?”, when the family is offered something (”what you want”) that cannot realistically be obtained.
The bottom line is taht people who can’t reasonably be expected to benefit from CPR should not get CPR, whatever anybody “wants”.
What the heck was this patient being treated for that she was given morphine? The cocktail of drugs she was given would seem to indicate treatment for severe agitation so why the morphine? I think the parents have a far better case for medical malpractice.
Happens every day...I have DNR in my will. Otherwise, what does the doctor do?? You say she’ll live. The doctor said she won’t. Why do people believe in prolonging their loved ones suffering...You want your loved one on machines?? Do you really think that’s what they want?
COVID CPR is an good example.
People who die from COVID die because their alveolar membranes get too thick to pass oxygen.
They arrest AFTER full dose steroids, IL-6 or JAK inhibitors, 100% oxygen and antivirals.
When the moment of cardiac arrest arrives, there is literally nothing else to do.
NOt unless there is no family for the patient.
I have had to do that for my wife who is in a nursing home and can never be home, no heroic measures.
Ok, you chose DNR. That’s what you want. But if the rule is that the family is to choose whether to DNR or not, their choice should be respected.
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