« New Terrorist Tool - The Bulldozer
Be There Or Be Square »



Ignored Psychiatric Patient Dies On Floor Of Hospital Waiting Room

July 2nd, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Print Print

Some years ago, there was a cartoon showing a skeleton sitting in a doctor’s waiting room with an outdated magazine in its hand. Now life has imitated cartoon art: after waiting 24 hours in a New York City psychiatric hospital’s waiting room, a video shows a black woman falling to the floor and people streaming in and out seemingly oblivious to her until she is finally “discovered” roughly an hour later — and taken away dead.

In the new Internet info age, the tragedy (and what qualifies as an outrage) can be seen on You Tube. Here is an edited version of it that shows her collapse and the time gap between when she was “discovered” by hospital officials and taken away after people came in and out and seemingly didn’t notice the somewhat-noticeable clump on the floor — yet another sign of 21st century indifference.

ABC reports:

Even pared down to a few minutes, the hour-long surveillance video is disturbing.

At 5:32 a.m. June 19, a woman in a hospital gown in the waiting area of the psychiatric emergency room of a New York City hospital topples first to her knees before collapsing on her face.

A full hour passes. Other people stream in and out of the waiting room, including hospital security guards. The woman writes something on the ground before going completely still. Finally, someone takes notice and alerts the staff. But by then, at 6:36 a.m., the woman is already dead.

The woman, 49-year-old Esmin Green, died on the floor of the waiting room at the Kings County Hospital Center Psychiatric Emergency Department. Her exact cause of death has not been released.

The story — and You Tube — is now making the rounds worldwide, and there have been some immediately consequences: some hospital workers have been fired amid allegations that some hospital personnel tried to tinker with the time scale of what happened on Green’s records:

Several employees at Kings County Hospital have been fired after a disturbing videotape surfaced showing a woman dying in a waiting room, while workers did nothing.

The New York Civil Liberties Union released the video, which was taken two weeks ago…The NYCLU also says hospital workers fudged the time scale of the incident on Green’s medical records.

Now the group says the hospital, which is run by the city, will give patients in the waiting room a checkup every 15 minutes, and limit the number of patients to 25 at a time.

“The reason why this woman died the way she did is because there is a culture of indifference to patients that permeates every aspect of KCHC’s psychiatric care. Nothing short of that,” said civil rights lawyer Rob Cohen.

“I can’t explain what happened there,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg of the incident. “I think what they said was, ‘Oh well people sleep on the floor all the time and I didn’t pay any attention.’ They shouldn’t be sleeping on the floor, number one, and you should pay attention.”

Some more details on the allegations of an attempted cover up:

The medical report that logged Green’s death shows that staff had tried to cover up the incident. According to them, she was “sitting quietly in [the] waiting room” until 6:20 am when they noticed she had passed away and immediately tried to help her. Unfortunately for them, the CCTV footage proves quite the opposite. The video was released by the New York Civil Liberty Union, who had filed a case against the hospital for filthy conditions and the abuse of sedatives about a year earlier. The lawsuit would likely have been left at the bottom of a pile, but might be taken more seriously now.

AND:

Hospital records stated the patient was awake and going to the bathroom when the video showed she was facedown on the floor, Lieberman said.

“We are shocked and distressed by this situation. It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care,” said city Health and Hospitals Corp. president Alan D. Aviles in a statement yesterday.

Investigators are now reportedly considering criminal charges against some of those who were involved. Meanwhile, New York City officials have agreed in court to implement psychiatric-ward reforms, in light of the shocking incident. Here are some details you didn’t see on the edited tape:

Esmin Green, 49, had been waiting in the emergency room for nearly 24 hours when she toppled from her seat at 5:32 a.m. June 19, falling face down on the floor.

She was dead by 6:35, when someone on the medical staff, flagged down by a person in the waiting room, finally approached, nudged Green with her foot, and gently prodded her shoulder, as if to wake her. The staffer then left and returned with someone wearing a white lab coat who examined her and summoned help.

Until the staffer’s appearance, Green’s collapse barely caused a ripple. Other patients waiting a few feet away didn’t react. Security guards and a member of the hospital’s staff appeared to notice her prone body at least three times, but made no visible attempt to see whether she needed help.

One guard didn’t even leave his chair, rolling it around a corner to stare at the body, then rolling away a few moments later.

The story and video have sparked consternation around the world. A post on the Chicago Tribune blog has says:

This is our worst fear, isn’t it?

Being abandoned or, even worse, ignored in our time of greatest need.

It’s the reason we can’t turn away from the story of the Esmin Green, who collapsed in the emergency room of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn after waiting almost 24 hours for help….

….It’s a public hospital, by all accounts squalid and under-funded, a place none of us would want to take our final breath, given a choice.

Did Esmin Green have a mother who cuddled her when she was a baby? A brother or sister who played with her on the street? Friends who looked forward to a phone call? A child of her own?

Does anyone deserve to die this way – abandoned by those who might have helped, ignored by those in the grips of their own suffering or the disaffection of boredom?

In reality, this is one more case showing something seriously wrong in the compassion department in modern America — which first realized that some Americans apparently had a shocking new I-don’t-want-to-be-involved gene some 40 years ago…

The most widely publicized indifference incident that shocked America came in 1964, when Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in New York City near her home in Queens. News reports said she had been screaming for help for more than a half hour as she was being systematically butchered and no neighbors got involved or called 911 because they didn’t want to get involved. Later info surfaced putting this allegation into some doubt, but the genie had been let out of the bottle.

There have been other various incidents over the years indicating a growing indifference. One of the most shocking came earlier this month in Hartford, Connecticut when a 78-year-old man was hit by a car in a hit and run incident –and pedestrians and passing cars ignore him as he lies in the street. He has been left paralyzed from the waist down. The video of that is also a monument to indifference:



This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 7:16 am and is filed under Death, Health Care, Society. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 5 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Joe, I think you're over-generalizing. From this incident all that can be concluded at this point is that staff, both professional and otherwise, at the specific unit at which this incident took place have a serious problem. From the two incidents you pointed to one might suspect that there's a serious problem in New York but there's too much time and space between the two incidents to be too confident about our conclusions.

    This is really awful. It shouldn't have happened. I hope that steps are taken among the appropriate authorities so that it doesn't happen again and I hope that isn't they don't just fire a couple of low level hospital workers and call the problem solved.

    But I also think we should avoid over-generalizing.
    • ^
    • v
    >From this incident all that can be concluded at this point is that staff, both professional and otherwise, at the specific unit at which this incident took place have a serious problem

    You are right....those third class staff at the hospital should be executed for murder. Of course an investigation has to be made to find out who's responsible at higher level of the organization too. Usually the lowest level staff are just ordered to do certain things by their boss.
    • ^
    • v
    It's a systemic crisis throughout the nation, and IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT!
    • ^
    • v
    From what I've seen in hospitals, I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.

    I think it is an important symptom of the American way of life, but because it's not nice to know, it will be denied or ignored. Sooner or later, someone will say it's unpatriotic to talk about it.

    Evidence has been collected about how passersby react to someone in distress, (an indy film + a documentray), and the evidence is not pretty.
    Additional evidence has come from journalists who have gone under cover to live the life of the homeless or a poor minority member.
    I also recall the dumping of patients from out-of-town hospitals on LA streets.

    We also have an 'it's their own fault' mentality in full bloom in some quarters, to hide the obvious from view.
    • ^
    • v
    Joe, thanks for the post. I don't know whether or not it is over-generalizing, but given that people's lives are at stake here this should be a wake up call for ALL hospitals, clinics, etc. to look at their policies and emphasize to their employees the reason why they are there: to help save lives. That includes guards, who are there to protect the people. This should be done everywhere, including first rate institutions. If the administration can't tell their employees that the health of their patients is their primary concern, then the administration should be fired and charges brought against them.

    One of my pet peeves is when people say, "It's too bad but it's a one time thing. There's no reason to blow it out of proportion." No one can say that unless they dig deep and look at problems. I'm sure one of the reasons the lawsuit that was filed against the hospital a year hadn't received more attention is that no one thought there was much merit to it. How often do we read stories (not just about hospitals, but child abuse, etc.) in the newspaper about "warning signs" that someone should have paid attention to... No one did pay attention until someone was hurt or died. And then we end up with shocking stories like this one.

    The security guard who rolled his chair around the corner to just take a peek at her clearly was not doing his job.

    Why does it take death to get people to wake up and do their jobs?
 
close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus

« New Terrorist Tool - The Bulldozer
Be There Or Be Square »


By posting comments on The Moderate Voice you are acknowledging and agreeing to the following general comments policy:

(1) The Moderate Voice's comments are hosted by Disqus (http://disqus.com). If your comment doesn't appear immediately, please be patient since it is an off-site system.

(2) All e-mail received from readers by The Moderate Voice is considered intended for publication unless otherwise indicated in the initial message from the writer. Please do not send us attachments unless you contact us and we agree to it.

(3)The Moderate Voice reserves the right to edit all e-mail and posted comments for content, clarity, and length.

(4) Our comment space is reserved for comments that relate to a post's topic. You should not reprint lengthy text from your own works or those of others, including news articles. You MAY link to them.

(5) Comments that are abusive, offensive, contain profane or racist material or violate the terms of service for this blog's host provider will be removed and the author(s) banned from future comments. Such comments also violate the very SPIRIT of this site -- which was created to encourage thoughtful and vigorous discussion among readers who may share differing viewpoints.

(6) All points of view are welcome on The Moderate Voice, with the following exceptions:

(a) Comments posted several times a day with the intent of dominating, re-directing or hijacking the thread by turning a discussion into the equivalent of a bitter shouting match.

(b) Comments posted several times a day that insult or call other commenters or blog writers names or repeatedly make the same point with the effect of or clear intent to annoy other commenters or blog writers.

(7) Name-calling, personal attacks, racist comments or use of profanity by any commenter, whether they are by persons who agree or disagree with the views expressed by The Moderate Voice will NOT be tolerated and will result in the deletion of the comment and the banning of the commenter's ISP address, without notice. In some cases a comment may be deleted and the writer will be given another chance. Commenters who virtually ASK The Moderate Voice to ban them by ignoring any warnings or daring TMV to ban them will quickly get their wish.

(8) Anonymous commenters should identify themselves with the same moniker, so readers know their comments are coming from a single individual. If they don't, they are subject to a banning.

(9)If we have problems with inappropriate or inflammatory comments from a commenter who it turns out gave a fake email address that person is subject to immediate banning.

(10) Quotes from material appearing on The Moderate Voice with attribution are allowed. Reprints are allowed only by permission from The Moderate Voice. You may request permission by e-mail.

(11) The Moderate Voice is a personal site. It is not the Government. It is NOT aligned with any political party. It is NOT promoting any specific candidate for office. It is not a public institution or a media organization. It is not a neutral site. It is intended to express and disseminate the authors' varying points of views. Writers on this weblog WILL take positions. It reserves the right to limit comments to those that, in its view, comport with its stated comment policy. Comments that do not comply are subject to deletion and banning of the author's ISP.

Disclaimer:

--Reading and posting comments at The Moderate Voice constitutes acknowledgment of and agreement to the terms outlined in this comment policy. This comment policy may be revised in part or in full at any time.

--All comments must comport with applicable state and federal laws. The Moderate Voice has no obigation to monitor, edit, censor, or take responsibility for comments. It may or may not act upon a violation of its comment policy once a suspected violation has been brought to its attention. Therefore, commenters are solely responsible for the content of their comments and should ensure that that their comments are lawful and fall within the stated guidelines of both The Moderate Voice and its hosting company.

--The Moderate Voice is not be responsible for injury or liability to any reader or commenter resulting from its own communications or those of commenters, that may be offensive, misleading, inaccurate, illegal, or otherwise unsuitable in the view of the reader. Readers and commenters further agree to indemnify and hold harmless The Moderate Voice from claims resulting from the use of any material appearing on The Moderate Voice which damages the reader, commenter or any other party.

--The Moderate Voice is not responsible for and might disagree with material posted in the comments section. While we strive for accuracy in our posts and DO correct errors, material posted by The Moderate Voice in its posts -- or those left by others in the comments section -- may or may not be accurate.

Read and Post at your own risk.