An Albouystown mother of four died at the Georgetown Public Hospital after reportedly suffering three heart attacks while waiting for more than 12 hours for critical medical attention and relatives, while calling for the emergency room staff on duty at the time to be disciplined, said that woman was badly treated.
Farida De Souza, 56, of Lot 22 Callender Street, Albouystown died on May 15 from what relatives were told was a massive heart attack which resulted in 90% of her heart being damaged. She would have suffered two mild heart attacks before that one.
The staff at the hospital are now being accused of negligence and according to relatives they would have been satisfied if those on duty had reacted to De Souza’s case with some urgency and had taken note of the terrible chest pains she was getting.
The hospital’s Public Relations Officer Mitzy Campbell has since told Stabroek News that a report was made to the institution and an investigation is being conducted.
An upset and still grief stricken Raul De Souza told this newspaper of the harrowing experience his mother had to endure. He said he decided to highlight the situation since he wanted to prevent a reoccurrence and for those who were negligent to be disciplined.
According to Raul on May 13, around 11 am his mother collapsed at home and slipped into a state of unconsciousness. He recalled that he called the hospital for an ambulance and was told that none was available at the time.
He said he rushed his mother to the hospital in a taxi and when she arrived at the institution she had to wait for some time in the waiting area of the Accident and Emergency Unit before she went into a treatment room to see a doctor.
Raul told this newspaper that the doctor indicated at that point that she would need to take two bottles of saline as well have urine and blood tests conducted. All this he said was done around 2:30 pm.
He recalled that around 5 pm after she had received all the saline that was required, they were told that De Souza needed to go back to the waiting area to await the results of the tests. He said that during his period his mother was very uncomfortable on the benches. He said he indicated this to a nurse and asked if there was a bed available for her to lie on. He recalled being told, “Sir we don’t have beds for patients that are feeling bad. You have to wait.”
According to Raul, a man who was standing nearby suggested that the woman be placed in a wheel chair.
Around this same time he said, they inquired about the tests that were ordered but none of the staff could give a satisfactory answer. He said the staff kept saying, “We don’t know. You have to go to the lab. I was back and forth, back and forth all the time”.
He said that by then sitting in the waiting room for hours was beginning to frustrate him. He said he asked the nurses several times for his mother to be allowed to leave but they advised against it saying that if she left and had to return the process would have to start all over again.
Around 10:30 pm, his mother started to complain about terrible chest pains and this was brought to the attention of those on duty. The man said he was told nothing could be done until the test results were available and the doctor had assessed the situation.
At 2:30 the following morning, he said, he was told that the test results were ready. Raul said that while in the treatment room, the doctor indicated that he did not like how the results looked since something seemed wrong with the heart. It was at this point he said that the doctor ordered a “heart x-ray” to be done.
“She kept complaining about the chest pains,” he stressed adding that his wife later accompanied De Souza to the x-ray department.
He said his mother had to walk to that department without a doctor or nurse and she later collapsed on a bench. His wife’s screams, he said, alerted a staff member and De Souza who was in a semi-conscious state and visibly weak was taken back to the emergency room where she was placed on a bed and attached to several machines.
Raul said that shortly after his mother started pulling off her oxygen mask and several of the cords she was hooked up to and was complaining that she could not breathe. “They [the staff] start asking me if she does catch fits,” he recalled adding that shortly after the persons attending to his mother “realised she was losing pulse.
“Then they call the doctor and everybody get busy and start flocking around… she had no pulse. Then her heart stopped beating and they had to do CPR,” he recalled adding that they managed to revive her. They apparently had to do so several times.
He was later told that she had suffered two small heart attacks and one massive one which resulted in damage to 90% of her heart. Thereafter, he said, they had to keep her on a manual life support machine and a nurse was standing “pumping the machine for a long while”. She was later admitted to the Intensive Care Unit on placed on life support but died around 7 am the following day.
“This was clear negligence of the nurses. I can’t put the blame on the entire hospital… It was just those in the emergency room,” he said. Raul added that the nurses in the ICU worked hard but by the time his mother reached them she was already far gone.
He said that on receiving the news of his mother’s death, he overturned three tables in the emergency room and was arrested by the police who later released him. He said he behaved that way to represent all those who visited the hospital and lost loved ones under the same circumstances as he did.
Raul said he had since lodged a complaint with the hospital and is making arrangements to visit the institution to identify all of the staff he had interacted with during the time his mother was there.
“I want a full investigation,” he said while questioning why his mother had to wait so long to be properly attended to. “I want them to discipline those people who don’t value people’s lives,” he stressed. He insisted that had the doctors and nurses acted promptly when he informed them about the chest pains, his mother’s life could have been saved.
He indicated that no post-mortem examination was done and the family accepted the cause of death given by the hospital. He said the hospital told them that she died from heart failure and that the damage to the heart was severe as the valves “had burst”.
A copy of the death certificate seen by this newspaper said that the condition leading directly to death was “acute myocardial infarction” with diabetes mellitus being a significant condition contributing to death.
Almost lost a leg
Raul said the hospital almost made his mother lose her entire leg some time back, while she was a patient there for her diabetic condition. “Because of their slow response I took her out of there,” he said adding that she was taken to a private hospital where the foot was scraped and properly treated. She lost two toes instead of the entire leg.
He said that at the GPH, the nurses had insisted that the entire leg had to be amputated.
