‘They told us he was safe there’
Man, 79, left with broken nose, black eyes after night at Health Sciences Centre
A 79-year-old man in the Health Sciences Centre was left with two black eyes and a broken nose, but how he got them is a mystery.
While it's obvious he took a fall at some point during the night of Feb. 26, his daughter, Christy Kirkland, wants to know the details, but no one will tell her anything.
"He remembers falling. He doesn't know where he was going or why he decided to leave, but he remembers the actual fall, and he remembers that people helped him up," Kirkland said. The one thing Kirkland does know about the situation is that her father was supposed to be safe inside the Health Sciences Centre's emergency department.
FAST-TRACKING LONGTERM CARE
The St. John's man was initially brought to the ER by his daughters on Friday, Feb. 23.
Kirkland said her father has been dealing with memory issues for the last couple of years, but over Christmas he contracted COVID-19. Since then, his condition has gotten worse, she said, and he is now believed to be dealing with dementia.
"He is rapidly declining. He doesn't eat, he doesn't drink. He doesn't think of eating or drinking. He's constantly confused."
To help speed up the process of getting her father into long-term care, Kirkland and her sister brought him to the ER.
"We've been to the family doctor. They requested assessments that take forever," she said.
'NO LONGER SAFE AT HOME'
That Friday, she was told that her father couldn't see a specialist until Monday. She said they had two choices: bring him home for the weekend and return to the ER again on Monday or leave him in the ER department's hallway until Monday.
They chose to bring him home for a couple of days.
“Monday morning we brought him back and we had to go through the whole emergency, triaging, all of that again,” Kirkland said.
After nine hours in the ER, her dad finally saw some social workers and a doctor. The process of him being placed in long-term care had started.
“He would walk to the mall in a snowstorm. He was no longer safe at home and we have families and full-time jobs. We can’t sit by his bedside 24 hours a day,” Kirkland said.
Doctors assured Kirkland and her sister that the safest place for their father to be until he was placed in longterm care was the emergency department.
SUPPOSED TO BE SAFE
When they left on Monday night, Kirkland said, her father was OK but was becoming agitated and disoriented.
“He was in the hallway, not quite directly across from the nursing station, but a bed down,” she said.
On Tuesday, Kirkland and her sister went back to the ER. They spent the day talking to the doctor, who said neurologists were ordering more tests.
By Tuesday night, her father was becoming disoriented again.
“We left him. We made sure that the nurses knew that he was not safe. He was agitated, he was confused, but we had to go home to our families,” Kirkland said.
“They told us he was safe there.”
FRIGHTENING CALL
At 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the hospital called. Her father had gone outside and had fallen.
“We got there not long after that. His face was smashed,” Kirkland said.
All the information they were given is that her father went outside and fell, and the security guards brought him back in.
“They couldn’t tell us how long he was outside. Security can’t give us any information because of privacy reasons. They can’t even tell us what time he was found or how long he was out there,” Kirkland said.
“They can’t even tell us if they still have the footage
or not.”
The nurses recalled her father laughing at 3:30 a.m.
Other patients in the hallway told Kirkland that they saw her father pacing for hours before he went outside, but they kept coaxing him back to bed.
At one point, someone said, her father stood up on his gurney before he went outside.
“My dad is 79 years old. He’s not very fast. He’s fully mobile. He can walk. It’s just his mental function,” she said.
“So then he managed, at 79 years old, to put his boots, coat, and hat on, and walk past the nurses’ station, through the double doors, down the long hallway out the front door, and fall down somewhere in the parking lot,” Kirkland said.
She said she doesn’t know if the nurses had to call a code yellow, which signifies a missing adult patient.
No one can tell her anything, and her father barely remembers, she said.
“We have no idea how long he may have been lying in the parking lot trying to get up. We have no idea if he lost consciousness. The only information we have is that he was found at 4:17 a.m. by security,” she said.
‘HE COULD HAVE DIED’
Kirkland is angry.
“We brought our father (to the Health Sciences Centre) for his safety and he was injured in their care,” she said.
“He could have died, he could have had a brain injury, he could have frozen to death, he could have fallen in the river, he could have walked into the busy parkway.
“The level of care my father has received at the largest and most advanced hospital in the province is shocking, to say the least. This should never have happened, and we are furious.”
GOING BACKWARDS
Since his fall, Kirkland’s father has been transferred to the neurology department on the Health Sciences Centre’s fourth floor, where he has to be reassessed for long-term care once again.
It will be the third time he has gone through the process since Feb. 23. The ER assessments conducted by social workers are gone.
“We have a new social worker upstairs and she can’t actually assess him for his needs until he is medically discharged. He’s going to be discharged medically once he passes all his tests, but he will stay here until he finds a place to go,” she said.
In the meantime, a guard will stand outside her father’s room to make sure he can’t wander away again.
‘FAILURE OF THE SYSTEM’
Kirkland said it could have all been avoided, but she is not upset with the doctors or nurses. Instead, she blames the system. All the health professionals have been very apologetic, she said.
“They gave us the client relations information. They said, ‘Go kick up a stink, because we’re just as upset about this,’” Kirkland said.
“The emergency room is full of elderly people. They are in the hallways. We were there for three days, and they are just lying in the hallway all by themselves.”
Since her father’s fall, Kirkland has contacted client relations, the Department of Health and a few MHAS, and has posted about the situation on Facebook. Client relations responded on Friday afternoon with further followup coming on Monday. In an email to Kirkland, they said: “I wanted to advise that NLHS began an offical investigation into this matter, under the Patient Saftey Act, as soon as it was discovered.”
Kirkland has yet to hear from any MHAS, but her post has garnered a lot of attention online, with over 1,000 shares.
She wants to see more geriatricians practice in the province so the elderly can get the care they need.
“He could have, instead of breaking his nose, cracked his skull, and we’d be planning a funeral,” said Kirkland.
“This is outrageous.”