Posted on 02/27/2010 6:07:23 PM PST by BykrBayb
MIAMI (WSVN) -- A young mother died when, a lawsuit claims, she was taken off life support without her family's permission.
It was supposed to be a day of joy for the Francois family. Twenty-six-year-old Caroline was giving birth to her third child at a local hospital.
The baby was born fine, but the next day things went terribly wrong for the young mother. "Her blood pressure remained high and continued to remain high," said the family's attorney, Loreen Kreizinger. "As a result of her uncontrolled hypertension, she had a bleed to the brain, which happened the next day after the baby was born."
Caroline was put on life support. "It's terrible," said Kreizinger. "It's probably one of the worst things I've personally ever experienced as an attorney, and I am also a nurse."
According to the lawsuit, after Caroline was put on life support, the local hospital called the University of Miami organ donor program. An employee of the donor program went to the hospital and tried to meet with the family. "Mr. Francois never spoke with them and never gave consent," said the family's attorney.
But despite that, the lawsuit against the University of Miami claims that same employee, who is not a medical doctor wrote physician's orders in Caroline's chart which read: "Patient pronounced brain dead at 16:16 hours," and, "Please discontinue all treatments including the ventilator."
"We have evidence that he physically entered the room and actually turned off the ventilator," said the lawyer.
Court testimony supports that shocking allegation. Caroline's respiratory therapist was asked in a deposition, "Who physically took Caroline off the ventilator?" The therapist replied, "That's a gentleman from organ procurement."
In Caroline's chart, her nurse wrote the employee from UM "turned off vent," referring to the ventilator.
No one is saying why this employee might have pulled the plug, but Caroline's doctor is very clear. In testimony, her doctor was asked, "Did you yourself at anytime make an assessment that Caroline was brain dead?" The answer: "No."
"We have evidence that Caroline began to breathe on her own, both by a computerized respiratory printout and by handwritten notes of the respiratory therapist," said Kreizinger.
Asked if she was implying that Caroline was breathing on her own and still taken off life support, the family's attorney replied, "That's right. That's what we're saying here."
The University of Miami denies the allegations in the lawsuit, saying, "This defendant specifically denies that it, or anyone for whom it could be held legally responsible, caused or contributed to Caroline Francois's death."
"It certainly is the University of Miami's position that there were four determinations of brain death prior to disconnection from ventilator," said University of Miami attorney Helenemarie Blake. "There is an issue of fact as to who disconnected the ventilator, if at all."
In court Thursday, University of Miami attorneys tried to get the judge to strike Caroline's nurse from the witness list. That nurse allegedly witnessed who turned off the ventilator. The attorneys say they have not been able to locate that nurse to depose him. The judge has denied that request.
Death happens.
There's about thirty or forty million of those hard-core communist "somebodys" in the US.
Glenn has arrived to impart his wisdom.
I’m a nurse, and I know that the charge nurse is not always there.
I have an aside, here, that I hope opens people’s eyes about hospitals.
Yesterday, my postperson delivered a large manila envelope to me, and had me sign for it, as it was certified mail. It was of course addressed to me, and had the correct address on it.
Inside, was a form letter from the radiology department of the hospital where I went for treatment of my heart attack, over a year ago, stating that they did not have room to store my x-rays from another facility and were returning them to me. No name was on the form letter, no signature. The CDs enclosed had someone else’s name on them, the last name was similar but spelled differently.
I called the radiology department librarian who had presumably sent me the letter and the CDs by certified mail, and explained that there was an error. The young lady who answered said she had no idea what to do, and transferred my call to medical records.
The medical records librarian said that it wasn’t her problem, the radiology department librarian was “always doing that.” She said she couldn’t help me either, and would transfer me back to radiology.
I said, never mind to that, connect me with the hospital administrator. The secretary to the administrator was horrified, and said she would investigate and call me back. She did, and started to tell me something about the other patient. I immediately cautioned her that the other patient’s information was confidential, and I had no right to it, and that she should stop. She did. She asked me to just drop the CDs in the mail to her. I refused, stating that was not secure handling of records, and that the hospital should figure something out.
She said she would call me back again.
The next call was from someone in “Risk Management” who said that a courier would pick up the records. She asked me if I had opened the envelope. Of course, I told her. It had MY NAME ON IT. Again she said she would have the records picked up, and said, “And that will take care of everything.”
“Not quite,” I said. I told her that this was causing me a bit of concern about MY records. “I can assure you that your records are safe,” she said. I just laughed. “Pardon me if I don’t believe you,” I said, and told her what the medical records librarian had said about the radiology department librarian was “always doing that.” I reminded her that I had nothing to gain by telling her the truth.
Today is the weekend, and I have not heard further. I didn’t expect to, since the administrator’s office and the legal department don’t work on weekends.
This is just to let everyone know:
DON’T TRUST THE HOSPITALS! I received excellent care, and I have had no other problems with this hospital, but from TOP TO BOTTOM, hospitals are a mess.
This was a paperwork error. Can you imagine what other errors occur? I could tell you stories that would curl your hair.
Question everything. Never leave a loved one alone, who cannot speak for themselves. Do not let anyone in the room if you don’t know who they are. All hospital personnel must have identification, and produce it on demand.
Who?
Me????
He has. Life is life. Death is death.
Sure, death happens.
This young woman was killed.
But murder shouldn’t.
Apparently, no “death panels” are required — a single bureaucrat, acting on his own, is sufficient.
Cold. Very cold.
Murder is murder. That doesn’t make it right.
We saw this coming.
Just confirms my worst fears about our small town hospital, my whole family has made a pact, if we have to go to our hospital, get stabilized and get the hell down the road to the hospital we have had great care from.
My small town hospital is no better, but this was a large city hospital I was transferred to.
Yeah, I see that... and I would definitely be doing that kind of explicit statement. You know how they do ask you about a DNR, and there’s some paperwork to sign in regards to that (for my dad I made sure they had it down as “no DNR” and made it clear to the personnel at the hospital, too). Well, I guess it will also require another piece of paperwork for any medical treatment and as part of the medical file and as part of the medical paperwork that anyone may have with them — to make sure that this is explicitly stated, too.
I would make it a “revolt” and make it so that everyone in the country signed an explicit statement so that no harvesting of organs would be done in absolutely no case at all, until these people got the message that they better work it differently or nothing at all was going to come in.
The organ procurement industry is corrupt. People die every day waiting for organs because of that corruption. Few people are willing to donate perfectly good organs because of the corruption. Not very many people want their organs harvested while they’re still using them.
But despite that, the lawsuit against the University of Miami claims that same employee, who is not a medical doctor wrote physician's orders in Caroline's chart which read: "Patient pronounced brain dead at 16:16 hours," and, "Please discontinue all treatments including the ventilator."
"We have evidence that he physically entered the room and actually turned off the ventilator," said the lawyer.
~~~~~~~~~~~
If that were my wife and the mother of my child, said "employee" would instantly become an organ donor -- no lawsuit required...
Uh...if she was breathing on her own, she would have survived being taken off the ventilator.
Uh...not many people can survive on 2 to 7 respirations per minute.
Brain dead ain’t exactly my idea of living. They keep the body circulating until its time to harvest the organs.
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