Severe Emergency Room Neglect; What Do I Do Next?

[summerpoem]

Dogmatique, I found your post interesting. You said we only have OP's report of what happened. Of course. Whose else would we have about THIS particular situation? Furthermore, isn't that the case with every situation that is posed here? There is no way to glean the full situation from the questioner's singular point of view. You will always get one side only. Sort of a "given," isn't it? Yet, people still jump in and give their opinions based on the information presented.

(By the way, I wonder where was your "get the facts first" admonition to all the other posters who were in lock-step agreement that she had NO case at all? Aren't their statements just as much a "disservice" to the OP as you believe MY opinion is?)

Anyway, if you go back and recheck, you will see that I was the first one who told her to find an attorney and get her medical records. (A statement I repeated in every post.) The rest of my postings are my conjecture, true. And yes, perhaps I should have inserted a disclaimer. But you know what? I can't apologize for giving my opinion. I DO hope she gets a handsome settlement because I believe she was deeply wronged.

You think I'M jumping to conclusions, and I tend to think that maybe YOUR bias is showing. You read the OP's post and (like some others here,) may decide the OP's "style" is sort of hinky, or a little strange. The next thought then is perhaps automaticaly discounting the veracity of her story. I could just see people rolling their eyes after reading it.

How do I know? I work with this population day in and day out. I see and hear how other people react to them. It breaks my heart. Due to their illness, these patients have a hard time expressing their feelings in a way "normal" people would deem acceptable. That doesn't make them wrong. Doesn't make them less intelligent. Just means they are really struggling.

Most likely we will never know the truth about this situation. So might your caution to "wait" on giving advice be a bit unrealistic? All we can give is our educated opinions. And I will go on record as saying I believe every word she said. I have worked in hospitals for many years and I know how staff can be, especially to those they don't want to understand. So yes, I believe she was ignored and ridiculed in the ER. I believe she wrapped the phone cord around her neck. I also believe she nearly died.

Based on that, do I think she had tangible damages? Absolutely. Would I know the extent of them? No. But the pain and suffering alone of undergoing a code and intubation in the ER, then landing in the ICU, seems like serious tangible damages to me. Emotional and physical pain is REAL.

I wouldn't want to go through it! Bet you wouldn't either. What would you or I do if a similar situation happened to us or to our dearest loved ones?

It's not too far-fetched. As I said, we are all a head injury away from this possible scenario. Don't dismiss it as ludicrous. It happens to normal healthy people every day.

(By the way, I won't be on the board for the next few days. Very hectic work and family schedule ahead. I know, I know, stop cheering. Lol...)

 

[lealea1005]

Well, let's just run through a few of them. Specifically, what the OP does NOT remember. She remembers wrapping the cord around her neck. Her partner told her she was unresponsive and the medical team came in to resuscitate her. Her next memory was waking up in the ICU, intubated.

Not quite. S/he remembers...

I took a quick tour of my room on foot and stopped at the wall telephone. I gently unclipped the handset cord of the wall telephone and carried it back to the bed with me. Without full understanding of what I was happening, I stretched the cord and wrapped it vigorously four times around my neck ensuring that it was as tight as it could be. I put myself back in the bed and pulled the blanket up to my cheek as usual and felt the blood supply slowly diminish to my brain.

After the point when my body became icy and I began to feel a calming euphoria from the lack of oxygen in my brain.....

That's a LOT of detail for some one who was "oxygen starved", resulting in intubation. His/her partner was not there for the act, but arrived later to find OP.

That means she was near death and was coded. You only intubate a patient in an emergency who is NOT breathing. (Intubation is putting a tube down the throat into the lungs and hooking that person up to a ventilator to breathe for them.) Codes are very traumatic. Fractured ribs, lacerated livers, and internal injuries are very common. Too, emergency intubation means the ER doctor selected the size of the ET tube based on a quick decision of that person's throat and trachea. A wrong decision could mean damaged vocal cords and inability to swallow properly after it's removed.

I'm well aware of what it all means.

She woke up the next day in ICU. Unconscious for at least a day. IV fluids, and tubes everywhere. This is not a benign event to minimize in any way. Plain and simple, she almost died...

Stop getting your knickers in a knot. No one here minimized the fact that OP is suicidal and, if details are exactly as OP states, s/he should seek the advice of a med/mal attorney.

As for her medical bills....OP made the decision (conscious and well planned out by his/her detailed account) to attempt suicide IN AN EMERGENCY ROOM. Do I agree that some one needed to be assigned 1:1 until appropriate Psychiatric help arrived? You bet.

As for her clarity of recall, I don't find that odd at all. Many of our patients remember in striking detail all that happened prior to the massive overdose, or slashing of their wrists. Emotional trauma makes memories stand out. Don't you remember vividly where you were on Sept. 11, 2001? True, some patients are foggy with little recall and that is very common when associated with alcohol and drugs.

I know you think you know more than the rest of us but.... memory loss due to hypoxia (lack of oxygen) is totally different than recall before a emotional traumatic event such as and MVA or 9-11 (and yes, I remember where I was very well. My friend died in the south tower while he was trying to get people out, so don't go there). Retrograde amesia is not unusual when the brain is deprived of oxygen. Certainly, recalling very detailed events immediately before the event would be unusual....not impossible, but unusual.

PS: S/he got advice from at least one attorney on this board.

 

[ecmst12]

You also went off on a huge tangent about damages she COULD have suffered but according to her post, did not. She didn't post about any of those problems. You can't just guess about this stuff. You don't win lawsuits because of what MIGHT have happened, only because of what DID happen. If she recovered fully from the suicide attempt and has no permanent damage to her body, then her damages are going to be minimal. The psychiatric treatment she needed, well she already needed that before she even went to the ER.

 

[Proserpina]

A lot of stuff

You assume far too much, about both the OP's situation and the possible background/experience of other posters here. It's quite possible that there is actually someone who responded who has more experience and/or knowledge than you in the medicolegal arena.

In my very humble opinion it's far more damaging to give a psychiatric patient - particularly one with a history of suicidal ideation (and you should know this) - false hope about any situation than it is to prepare that patient for a more realistic, if negative, outcome.

Having said that, ecmst12's last post says it all in a nutshell and more than adequately.

 

[Silverplum]

Based upon the overdetailed, almost ~flowery~ description of her "experience," I vote Aspiring Author Looking For How To Continue The Story.

 

[Antigone*]

Based upon the overdetailed, almost ~flowery~ description of her "experience," I vote Aspiring Author Looking For How To Continue The Story.

That is very eloquent SP. The word that came to mind for me was ~ troll.

 

[Proserpina]

Oh for the love of all things good and chocolatey....I missed another one?!

Dognabbit, I reeeeally need to get my troll-detecting kit working right. Keeps missing the obvious ones. Grumble grumble grumble.

 

[Antigone*]

Oh for the love of all things good and chocolatey....I missed another one?!

Dognabbit, I reeeeally need to get my troll-detecting kit working right. Keeps missing the obvious ones. Grumble grumble grumble.

Look at it dog. She got everybody's panties/boxers in a bunch and led us down this long windy path with her descriptive metaphors about this and it lead to that.

What traumatized psycho suicidal sicko writes like Ernest Hemmingway?

 

[slwx]

What traumatized psycho suicidal sicko writes like Ernest Hemmingway?

i've been following this post -- and i have to agree with troll since they have abandoned the post.

however, i hope you would never be that insensitive to someone who was legitimately depressed, suicidal, or psychotic? and does being depressed make your automatically illiterate? after all, ernest hemingway DID make a suicide attempt.

or maybe you meant it to be psychopathic? which is very different from psychotic

(sorry -- i have a son with major depression with psychotic features. he suddenly became ill at 15 and continues to fight it at 19 with the help of a wonderful psychiatrist and medication. i feel the need to fight the stigma of mental illness whenever i see it. if the OP was trolling, then shame on them too. if you've never had a depressive episode in your life, then count yourself lucky -- i do everyday -- and have some compassion for people less fortunate than you are.)

 

[You Are Guilty]

Not much I could add that hasn't already been said so I'll keep this brief.

1) There is no such thing as strict med mal liability. Let's say our OP was being watched by the guard but instead of a phone cord, decided to poke her own eye out with a finger. Is the hospital automatically liable? Of course not. (Could they be? Sure, but there are plenty of other factors to consider before making that determination).

2) If you were a nurse in any of a half dozen NYC hospitals 10 years ago, there's a decent chance one of those "hospital lawyers" who lectured the RNs was me

3) As a med mal defense lawyer, nothing makes you happier than an unconscious patient. Why? Unconscious people have no pain and suffering. Since P&S is usually the largest component of a med mal award, getting that zeroed out early in the case is a huge benefit.

 

[ecmst12]

I also get the feeling that the things that nurses are warned about in legal seminars are a bit different then what REALLY happens when there is a real lawsuit. The seminars are going to talk about situations where they COULD POSSIBLY be found negligent...and likely in over-simplified scenarios, to encourage them to be more cautious in general. But what I've seen from reading this site is there are not too many absolutely black and white liability situations, and malpractice is a lot harder to prove then the legal seminars want nurses to think!

 

[las365]

I also get the feeling that the things that nurses are warned about in legal seminars are a bit different then what REALLY happens when there is a real lawsuit. The seminars are going to talk about situations where they COULD POSSIBLY be found negligent...and likely in over-simplified scenarios, to encourage them to be more cautious in general. But what I've seen from reading this site is there are not too many absolutely black and white liability situations, and malpractice is a lot harder to prove then the legal seminars want nurses to think!

That is exactly what I was thinking. Medical providers should certainly want their staffs to be more concerned about patient care and liability than less concerned. But what the staff is told doesn't necessarily translate to what really makes for a med mal case that is provable and economically viable to pursue.

 

[longsally111]

not trying to be insensitive here, really I am not. I just had a thought. This pt should be responsible for her own actions. She is a grown adult who chose to put a cord around her neck and try to kill herself. SHE did it, no one else. SHE is now looking for a settlement. SHE will live nicely off this money and SHE is the one who has this fantastic memory. Anyone with hypoxia to the brain after an event like this would NOT remember for 5-10 minutes prior to the incident. That alone tells me that this did not really happenned and she is FOS!!!

 

[lealea1005]

Almost 3 years after joining, I still have a hard time deciding who is or isn't a troll. I'll try to adjust the frequency on my troll-dar.

 

[lya]

I also get the feeling that the things that nurses are warned about in legal seminars are a bit different then what REALLY happens when there is a real lawsuit. The seminars are going to talk about situations where they COULD POSSIBLY be found negligent...and likely in over-simplified scenarios, to encourage them to be more cautious in general. But what I've seen from reading this site is there are not too many absolutely black and white liability situations, and malpractice is a lot harder to prove then the legal seminars want nurses to think!

WAIT JUST A MINUTE! That is about the most, if not the most, insulting comment about the PROFESSION of Nursing that I have ever read, anywhere.

I suggest you do some research on Medical Legal Nursing Seminars. You will find that the seminars are presented by RNs with Juris Doctorates, Attorneys who specialize in Medical Malpractice, and you will find that actual case law medmal claims from all over the US are the subject matter.