General Winnipeg hospital investigating after remains of wrong baby sent to family

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Onetrickpony

Stay gold
Nov 21, 2016
14,042
32,308
For fucks sake, get your shit together Saint B.

Winnipeg hospital investigating after remains of wrong baby sent to family

CTVNews.ca staff, with a report from CTV Winnipeg’s Jon Hendricks
Published Friday, June 7, 2019 7:51PM EDT

A Winnipeg hospital says it’s investigating how the wrong baby’s remains were sent to a family in Nunavut.

St. Boniface Hospital says the error was detected during a process called reconciliation between pathology samples and body remains in the morgue. After the baby died at the hospital, another infant’s remains were sent to Nunavut for burial.


St. Boniface Hospital is seen in this file image.

"In 33 years of experience in various hospital settings, and various positions, I have never seen a case like this before,” St. Boniface Hospital President and CEO Martine Bouchard told CTV Winnipeg.

“And I do not wish to relive this in my career.”

Bouchard said she wants to see the review of the mix-up finished by the end of the summer so that the families involved can have all the answers.

The family in Nunavut was told about the mistake last month, when two nurses flew from Winnipeg to give the parents their true baby’s remains.

The hospital says it wants to ensure this kind of mistake never happens again.

Winnipeg hospital investigating after remains of wrong baby sent to family



Late afternoon, another day is nearly done
A darker grey is breaking through a lighter one
A thousand sharpened elbows in the underground
That hollow, hurried sound

Of feet on polished floor
And in the dollar store
The clerk is closing up
And counting loonies, trying not to say

I hate Winnipeg

The driver checks the mirror, seven minutes late
The crowded riders' restlessness enunciates
The Guess Who suck, the Jets were lousy anyway
The same route every day

And in the turning lane
Someone's stalled again
He's talking to himself
And hears the price of gas repeat his phrase

I hate Winnipeg

And up above us all, leaning into sky
A golden business boy will watch the north end die
And sing I love this town
Then let his arcing wrecking ball proclaim

I hate Winnipeg

 

Onetrickpony

Stay gold
Nov 21, 2016
14,042
32,308
that is pretty fucking horrible
It looks worse considering it was a Nunavut family. In the past they've been treated horribly by the government as well as the people in the rest of Canada and the only time this has ever happened, it happened to them.

To be clear, I'm not insinuating that the health care workers at Saint Boniface made this mistake on purpose (my dad was in there for two weeks last year after his heart almost gave out and the staff were great) but it sure looks terrible.
 

Onetrickpony

Stay gold
Nov 21, 2016
14,042
32,308
I listened to the Radio Lab podcast about this a year or two ago while working. I was tilling a park with tears running down my face hoping no one would notice. I accidentally redownloaded it last week and wasn't really paying attention while I was driving. As soon as I heard the mom start to talk about her son going into the hospital I shut that shit down and deleted it from my phone. The story is both tragic and uplifting. It definitely deserves a listen.

Here's a link to the podcast.

Apologetical | Radiolab | WNYC Studios

If you are planning on listening to the podcast do not read this article, if you are not be sure to read the article.

Mom of misdiagnosed toddler relives medical errors that led to son's death
CTVNews.ca
Published Thursday, August 7, 2014 11:43AM EDT
Leilani Schweitzer's 20-month-old son, Gabriel, died because of two hospital errors.

The first came when a hospital in Reno, Nev. misdiagnosed Gabriel's chronic brain condition as a stomach flu.

The second came days later at Stanford University Hospital, when a nurse switched off baby Gabriel's heart monitor alarms so Schweitzer could sleep.

PHOTOS


Leilani Schweitzer is shown in this undated photo with her son, Gabriel. (Leilani Schweitzer)

Gabriel's heart stopped, and he died.

Now, nine years later, Schweitzer works at the hospital where her son died as an advocate for better hospital-patient communication. She says medical mistakes – even fatal ones – are hard to totally avoid, but hospitals can control how patients and families are treated after a mistake is made.

"Those are choices. Those are deliberate things that hospitals can do to help patients and their families afterward," Schweitzer told CTV's Canada AM on Thursday. Schweitzer spoke to CTV News from Vancouver, where she was slated to speak at a conference on patient and family healthcare.

Schweitzer said Stanford Hospital did not deny nor defend the disastrous mistake that led to her son's death. Instead, hospital officials were upfront and honest about it. Schweitzer said that honesty helped her work through her grief, and also kept her from filing a lawsuit. "Instead of shutting me down, not answering my questions, they created a collaborative relationship with me," she said. "They investigated, they found the weakness in the monitoring system, and they made improvements to make all of the children at the hospital safer."

The hospital determined Schweitzer's son Gabriel died after a nurse unwittingly silenced his medical alarms so his mother could sleep. The alarms kept going off whenever the baby moved, and Schweitzer was trying to sleep in the same room as her ailing child. "I thanked her," Schweitzer said. "The nurse – she saw how exhausted and tired I was."

The nurse had meant to silence only one alarm, but she unwittingly disabled all nine monitors attached to the toddler. When Gabriel's heart stopped beating, no one noticed until it was too late.

Schweitzer said hospital staff recognized her need to make meaning from her son's tragic death, so they offered her a job as Stanford's first patient liaison. "I work with them every day to help people who have had similar experiences," she said. "No one wants these things to happen."

Schweitzer's son Gabriel suffered from hydrocephalus. The condition – commonly known as "water on the brain" – occurs when spinal fluid does not fully drain from the brain. Doctors implanted Gabriel with a shunt to drain the spinal fluid, but the shunt was prone to failure and occasionally needed to be changed. A complication with the shunt ultimately contributed to Gabriel's death.

Since Gabriel's death, Schweitzer has become an outspoken advocate for better hospital-patient communication. She delivered a speech on the subject for a TEDx video shot at the University of Nevada this year, and is scheduled to speak in Vancouver this week at the International Conference on Patient- and Family-Centred Care.

I have no idea why there are two spoiler tags.