Woman dies on ER floor as staff watch: video
p2pnet news | Off Topic:- Esmin Green, 49, collapsed on the floor in New York City’s corporate-run King County mental health hospital emergency unit while staff and other patients watched, doing nothing.
She was there for an hour before anyone tried to help her.
But she’d died in the meanwhile.
A security video shows a guard casually roll up in his chair to take a look, and roll away again without doing anything.
It also shows a doctor looking from the doorway and walking off without making any attempt to help Green, splayed helplessly on the floor.
“Esmin Green, 49, who was said to have suffered a mental breakdown, had been waiting to be seen at Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, for some 24 hours,” says the BBC.
“The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the hospital, has now agreed to increase the monitoring of patients at the hospital’s psychiatric ward, after a law suit.”
Six people have also been fired or suspended as a result of the incident, it says.
It’s reasonable to assume this disgusting incident would have gone unnoticed had it not been for the fact surveillance footage of the tragedy was released by lawyers who are suing the hospital.
It’s now being widely distributed online, including on YouTube.
Says New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation President Alan D. Aviles in a letter to all staff, published by the Chicago Tribune >>>
On June 19th, a 49-year old patient died in the waiting area of the Kings County Hospital Center Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP). She was found face down on the floor and unresponsive at about 6:30 a.m. Efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful.
A surveillance tape of the waiting area revealed that she had tumbled out of her chair onto the floor a full hour earlier. She lay there, her head under a waiting room chair. During that one-hour period, two of the hospital’s security officers and an attending psychiatrist saw her on the floor. None of these individuals went to her aid or examined her condition. A nurse entered the waiting area after the patient had been on the floor for nearly an hour, approached the patient and nudged the patient’s leg with her foot, as if she thought the patient might be asleep. When the patient did not respond, that nurse failed to examine the patient and left the area to summon another nurse. The second nurse examined the patient and ultimately called a team to attempt resuscitation.
To make matters worse, the second nurse falsely documented in the medical chart that she had checked on the patient within the previous 30 minutes and that the patient was ambulating and apparently fine.
The surveillance tape demonstrates otherwise.
It adds:
“I know that the vast majority of staff care deeply for our patients. I know that many staff perform superbly and at times heroically every day throughout our system and that many lives aresaved as a result of their hard work and dedication. And I know that one aberrant tragedy does not negate the world of good performed by HHC staff all year long.
“However, none of that can alter the brutal and shocking reality of what happened on June 19th, the sorrow and shame that it evokes, and the necessity to ensure that it never happens again.”
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.Stumble It!
BBC - Video shows US patient’s death, July 2, 2008
Chicago Tribune - Esmin Green’s death: the hospital chief responds, July 2, 2008
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July 3rd, 2008 at 5:39 am
Human rights is also about the right to treatment in a hospital….not just some highfalutin political missile targeted at nations in South America, Africa and Asia. It is indeed shocking that this happened in New York!
That the staff were simply fired or suspended is a joke….they should be criminally charged for manslaughter as they neglected not only the Hippocratic oath but also the very basic reason for the existence of hospitals - to treat patients.
By morbid comparisons, being bludgeoned to death is an easier concept to comprehend than this death by absolute neglect in a hospital
July 3rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
max- “they neglected…the very basic reason for the existence of [the] hospital…”
This happened at the CORPORATE-RUN King County mental health hospital emergency unit. Care giving to patients takes a back seat to profits and stock values. I’m not disagreeing with your post. Does it really surprise anyone that patient care levels suffer when health care facilities are run as for-profit enterprises? If you needed major surgery would you put it out for bids? That’s how we run our health care system here in the USA.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
But “Mostly Harmless”, one can argue it both ways. We all know about the apathy and lack of service that government run organizations practise, and this could just as well have happened in such an organization. On the other hand, for-profit enterprises know that their reputation and service are fundamentally key in ensuring that the revenue rolls in and such an act, if publicized would have been anathema to a properly run profit driven enterprise. In the old days though it could easily have been covered up, but thanks to You Tube, this bunch of uncouth humans deserve our full-forced disgust and anger.
The only conclusion that I can draw from it is probably not that it is profit or non-profit motivated - a hospital is fundamentally supposed to be built on the Hippocratic oath - in this instance, I am pretty sure that for a mob like to have killed someone by apathy, the culture in the hospital has already been set by the leadership in place, and of course they are to blame too.
July 4th, 2008 at 6:09 am
This is an embarrassment to the USA. Is this what democracy brings? Is this what Capitalism brings?
What do people in countries like Iraq and Iran think when they see this? Do you think this makes them want to be like the USA? NO! It makes our enemies fight us harder. Incidents like this have lasting repercussions all around the world. The staff at this hospital will be responsible for more US troop death.
The US should bring all those troops home and use them to get the US squared away. The US is just as bad as any third world country. worse in some ways.
This lady could not have died without even being looked at in any other country in the world. It could only happen in the Good ‘Ol USA.