"The family of a Ridgeway woman who died at Greater Niagara General Hospital after no one helped her while she sat dying in her boyfriend's car in the parking lot are outraged and hope nobody else has to go through what they did.
Jennifer James, a 39-year-old mother of two who "loved life," died at GNGH in Niagara Falls April 26, a few days after she was carried into the hospital — not breathing — by her boyfriend Charlie Poisson, his 11-year-old son, and a still-unknown woman who stepped up to help when hospital staff wouldn't."They said, 'Sorry, you gotta call 911,'" said Jarrett James, 37, Jennifer's brother. "Nobody would come out and help."
"They should've helped, they should've tried, they should've been out there," Eunice James, Jennifer's mother, said Thursday. "Regardless of what the outcome would've been. And it may have been the same. They needed to be out there."
Eunice James was scathing in her criticism of the GNGH emergency department, particularly one doctor whose name she did not know but whom she described as "arrogant."
But she credited the intensive care unit staff with being caring and helpful after Jennifer was moved there later the same night.
"As far as the ICU unit, the two nurses that we had there were absolutely wonderful," Eunice said. "As far as going in there to the ER or anything like that, I think it's just an awful place."
According to the family, Jennifer was in Poisson's car April 21 near the Niagara Falls car dealership where he worked. Reaching her hands up to her face, she began to yell and started having what appeared to be a seizure. They said Jennifer lost consciousness and stopped breathing, so Poisson sped to the hospital.
When he got there, the family said, he ran inside the main front door and was told to go the emergency department. But when he got there, no one was willing to help. So Poisson went back outside and started performing CPR.
After three or four minutes, his son Carson went into the hospital to get help, but couldn't find anybody who would come out.
An unknown woman who did not work at the hospital came outside and told them medical staff would not be coming out of the emergency department.
At this point, they grabbed Jennifer, put her in a wheelchair and pushed her into the hospital, at which point medical staff worked on her.
Although Jennifer was revived, the family was told by a nurse she had gone without adequate oxygen for about 45 minutes. The impact would likely be catastrophic on the brain.
About five days later, the family allowed Jennifer to be taken off life-support because she had only lower brain stem function. She died after about 24 hours, on April 26.
"They said that maybe someday, by a minor miracle, she might be able to blink her eyes," Jarrett said, explaining Jennifer's condition at the time.
"Jen was my best friend, so I am still reeling from this," Eunice said, sobbing.
"It's tough," said Jarrett. "We were very close. I talked to her every day. I miss the phone calls, I miss the banter, the joking around."
Eunice said doctors found Jennifer had an enlarged heart before she went in for minor surgery on neck vertebrae in 2010. Despite that, her neck surgery was a success.
The James' family wanted to make public their GNGH experience after reading media stories about the experience of Niagara Falls Coun. Joyce Morocco, who arrived at the hospital Sunday in a car driven by her husband, John.
While Morocco lay barely conscious and struggling to breathe in the car, her husband ran into the hospital to get help. He was told to call an ambulance. An ambulance was dispatched from the GNGH garage, several metres away.
The James' experience caused Niagara Health System interim CEO Sue Matthews to apologize to the family during the NHS' daily C. difficile press briefing at GNGH Thursday.
"I think what's most important is that this family's grieving, and it's very difficult and I feel for them as a nurse, as a human being … So I can apologize to them, how horrible their experience must be."
Matthews also said staff was told in December they are covered for liability or injury in hospital parking lots — despite the years-long belief among health workers that it's not safe to care for patients in parking lots."
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Enough of all these trite, useless apologies: IT'S TIME FOR CRIMINAL LEGAL ACTION against the negligent monopolist policies of Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government.
Someone will have to Cellino-and-Barnes McGuinty's irresponsible monopoly-enforcing, anti-patient-choice Liberal government.
This Liberal crap has been going on for too long.
Patients are dying and no-one's responsible for anything.
Where was the Liberal-created LHIN (which oversees the NHS) in all this?
Doesn't the LHIN, along with the Liberal government which completely controls the LHIN, have anything to do with this?
[Why isn't the LHIN giving public daily briefings on the C. diff outbreak, in the way the NHS has - finally - begun doing?
Why isn't MPP Jim Bradley - the loudmouth local Liberal healthcare monopolist - giving daily public briefings on what he has personally done during this outbreak? Jimmy could also answer questions on how his own single-payer health-monopolism, along with his years of despotic, smug secrecy, somehow do not make him culpable in the C. diff deaths in his own city.]
Funny how neither of Niagara's Liberal MPP's - Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley - are mentioned in this report.
(...I mean, gawrsh: what do these Liberals have to do with any of this?!)
The media's joyous narrative is about how Kim Craitor, the 'hero-maverick', is... umm... gonna save healthcare in Niagara!!
Forget about the fact that for the last eight years, Craitor and his single-payer-pushing Liberal monopolists have been secretively and steadily eroding health-care in Niagara! (yes: remember - Craitor is first and foremost a proud McGuinty-supporting Liberal. Craitor at every opportunity pretends that Niagara's Liberal-controlled monopolist health care disaster is somehow NOT political - yet then Craitor sanctimoniously and ominously blames harris whenever he can! Craitor, the devious Grit hypocrite (Grit-o-crite) sloughs off his own monstrous lying Liberal monopolism!!
Patients left fending for themselves in Niagara's hospital parking lots: that's CraitorCare TM for you.
Jim Diodati, the Liberal mayor of Niagara Falls Ont. should be warning EVERY TOURIST that his local Liberal-controlled health-care monopoly has been severely compromised, and that visitors could be taking chances with their lives if they got sick and expected swift care locally in Ontario; it'd be better if they went to the States with an emergency. (see also here)
Even the Niagara Regional government (led by Gary Burroughs - another Liberal, by the way...) has just blamed Niagara's C. difficile outbreak as a reason why thousands of forest-fire refugees from northern Ontario should not come to Niagara, the fear being that Niagara's Liberal-controlled health-care monopoly cannot handle them! As of July 22, 2011, 26 C. difficile infected patients have now died in Niagara's outbreak.
This is the legacy of Liberal George Smitherman folks - and for Liberals Kim Craitor, Jim Bradley, and a lot of Niagara's sanctimonious Liberal municipal politicians - this was and is the epitome of Dalton McGuinty's vision of Tommy Douglas' pipedream socialism. This monopolist-dream failure here - right in Niagara - is exactly what eight years of untouchable Liberal-majority government fascist health-care looks like.
Yet the Kim Craitors and Jim Diodatis think that someone else did all this, and if we only had some busy Liberals fixin' things, if we only had some more despotic socialism... why, then... everything would be all right again... just, ummm, as it was under McGuinty's benevolent, non-despotic rule!!! (say whaaaaat?!? you figure it out...)
No-one's responsible, for anything... oh, yeah, so some patients die here and there, but, so what??!
It isn't any Liberal's fault! (Why, just by reading the St.Catharines Standard and Niagara This Week you'll know that!!)
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So, once again folks - don't tell Michael Moore about any of this - vote for your local Liberal health monopolist, and vote often!! Liberals: they'll fix health-care!! Trust them!!! Why would a Liberal lie?!
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