Posted on 05/20/2007 10:52:28 AM PDT by John Jorsett
In the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, Edith Isabel Rodriguez was seen as a complainer.
"Thanks a lot, officers," an emergency room nurse told Los Angeles County police who brought in Rodriguez early May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital yelling for help. "This is her third time here."
The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three days for abdominal pain. She'd been given prescription medication and a doctor's appointment.
Turning to Rodriguez, the nurse said, "You have already been seen, and there is nothing we can do," according to a report by the county office of public safety, which provides security at the hospital.
Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum, writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked at their desks and numerous patients looked on.
Aside from one patient who briefly checked on her condition, no one helped her. A janitor cleaned the floor around her as if she were a piece of furniture. A closed-circuit camera captured everyone's apparent indifference.
Arriving to find Rodriguez on the floor, her boyfriend unsuccessfully tried to enlist help from the medical staff and county police — even a 911 dispatcher, who balked at sending rescuers to a hospital.
Alerted to the "disturbance" in the lobby, police stepped in — by running Rodriguez's record. They found an outstanding warrant and prepared to take her to jail. She died before she could be put into a squad car.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
in a case close to me the initial fever was treated with a antibiotic, the fever spiked daily and returned to 98.6 a couple times a day, with NO pain, after a week the family doc did a CT and it was guessed that diverticulitis was the cause
You need to put this in context:
King-Drew is a ghetto hospital that gets the worst of the worst when it comes to patients. Druggies going into withdrawal and psychos with imaginary pains are a regular part of the landscape. The triage nurse knew she’d just been seen by a doctor who had been unable to find anything wrong with her. She was probably discharged with a diagnosis of ‘stomach pain, unknown cause’, and returned yelling in exactly the same way she’d been yelling earlier. So, she got triaged at the bottom of the list.
Her actual behavior is sort of a regular fixture in that kind of ER. It was no doubt a busy night with lots of her Amigos crowding the room, many of them with specific, urgent problems. After seeing fifteen years of that, the triage nurse knew it wasn’t unusual. So, I’m thinking she did nothing wrong, and probably resigned in disgust. If there’s any potential issue here, it’s the failure to spot the problem by the original physician who treated her, but... again... it’s not a common problem. The real issue is the county’s administration and funding for King-Drew, a problem that goes back decades.
After going to a very good emergency room in a private hospital here, my sister was misdiagnosed as suffering a heart attack, even though the tests did not reveal one. Thousands of dollars later (paying for the “heart attack” treatment), she returned to the hospital after another attack, got a better doctor (an Indian, btw), and was diagnosed with gallstones. Her gallbladder had not been working for years and no physician had ever noticed this.
She’s had no problems since the removal of her gallbladder.
Personally, I think some of this woman’s problems did have to do with the fact that she was Hispanic. A family member who was a paramedic used to joke about HHS, Hispanic Hysterical Syndrome, because any ailment, no matter how minor, would bring out a grandmother who would throw herself on the street weeping and screaming. So the hospital probably wrote this woman off.
But they do that a lot. Once when my children were very young, I went to the doctor with severe backpains. He told me it was nerves. When I couldn’t stand it any more, I went to the emergency room, and they found a severe urinary tract infection that was begining to affect the kidneys.
So sometimes preconceptions - while they may have a basis in fact and experience - can interfere with medical treatment. And not only at the local state hospital, but at any level.
It has been over ten years since I worked in a county hospital (Houston - Ben Taub). It is a different world from a suburban specialty hospital. However, the patients were well taken care at Ben Taub regardless of insurance or ethnicity.
I find it hard to believe that an entire ER department would be so derilict, callous maybe but not derelict.
You may have a very valid point.
My point is that doctors and other medical staff often need to make choices about who to treat and when and how much. We’ve reached to point where many hospitals are in such chaos that many patients are dying from lack of timely care, medical errors, etc., while the staff is running around like chickens with their heads cut off. And when many of these people are essentially enemies of civilization, we need to be willing to recognize that they are NOT just as valuable as honest people who are sick or injured through no fault of their own. Resources are not unlimited, and choices have to be made. Remember the case where a murderer on death row got a heart transplant, while hundreds of fine upstanding citizens languished on the waiting list for a heart? Somebody else died because the decision was made to give that heart to a murderer. Sorry, but I don’t buy the argument that such choices are consistent with doctors’ commitment to “do no harm”.
Agreed.
My daughter has a friend who was diagnosed with a heart problem and had emergency surgery to insert a pacemaker, all for Chinese restaurant syndrome. They, of course, had to do more surgery to remove the pacemaker. The guy special forces and now works for the Secret Service and has a resting heart rate of 35.
I completely agree. I have a couple of questions. Had she been there 10 times before for things like the sniffles? Had she lied to the ER staff in the past? Was she a patient who was a drug seeker and had sold her pain medicine in the past? Was the staff busy treating emergencies like a family of illegal aliens with athlete’s foot? Were the rooms full of medicaid recipients with sunburn demanding treatment? Had she been told to follow up with her primary care doctor for this condition earlier and didn’t, then returned when it was too late? It sounds callous, but these are all real situations that I have dealt with in the ER. I have to give the benefit of the doubt to the staff. No one would leave someone in the hall if they thought it was a true emergency.
The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three days for abdominal pain.
“and will be interesting to see what the autopsy shows.”
Large perforation in the large bowel.
How did that occur?
I wonder how difficult that would be to diagnose? From the photo the woman was heavy and that could make it more difficult.
"..Over the last 3 1/2 years, King-Harbor has reeled from crisis to crisis.
Based on serious patient-care lapses, it has lost its national accreditation and federal funding. Hundreds of staff members have been disciplined and services cut.
Janssen said he was concerned that the incident would divert attention from preparing the hospital for a crucial review in six weeks that is to determine whether it can regain federal funding.
If the hospital fails, it could be forced to close. .."
It probably would be better if they closed. A lawsuit is almost certain here and I don't see how they win or why they should.
Agreed on every point.
I hope your loved one is well now.
-How did that occur?-
Several possibilities - diverticulitis would be a likely choice. Perforated appendix, ulcerative colitis, ischemic colitis, and cancer are all possibilities. Less likely in the US would be certain infections, such as typhoid fever. There are also cases with swallowed objects, like a toothpick, causing perforation.
I was thinking the same thing. She was obviously sick (leading to death) and since they couldn’t find her illness they assumed she was faking. The autopsy will prove interesting.
The first line of the article claims she was “seen as a complainer” by the emergency room. I assuming she had a history with the hospital that spanned longer than the three visits.
As one who worked for 20+ years in a large hospital's ER I can assure you of a couple of things.
1)All hospital ER's have "regulars".Some are folks with real (usually chronic) illnesses,some are mentally ill,some are homeless,some are junkies and some are just "pains in the a$$" (my term).
The other thing I can assure you of is that it's *never* a good thing to have a patient,particularly a "repeat customer",die in your ER's waiting room when screaming in pain and,allegedly,after having been been basically told that they not gonna do anything for you.
I repeat...that's *NEVER* a good thing.
A beastly way to die, regardless of reason for the perforation. For that to happen under the conditions it did adds to the horror.
Strange, few of even the FR community seem to place even part of the blame on all the free-loading illegal aliens from Mexico who have a deleterious effect on hospitals where said illegals reside.
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