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Star Columnists | | May. 2, 2001. 01:19 AM | | | Hospital battles to rebuff Lisa's mother | Rosie Dimanno
COLUMNIST | A SLIM RAILING separates Sharon Shore from the phalanx of lawyers and other officially sanctioned parties who have already obtained standing ``in the matter of an inquest into the death of Sanchia Bulgin.'' Mrs. Shore is not a lawyer, not a representative of any identifiable community, not a medical expert, not a relative of the deceased. She is merely the mother of another child who, like 17-year-old Sanchia, died while under the care of nursing staff on Ward Five A/B of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. It was largely due to the efforts of Mrs. Shore - her tenacity, her obstinacy - that the Ontario coroner's office convened an inquest into the death of 10-year-old Lisa Shore on Oct. 22, 1998. It was largely due to the efforts of Mrs. Shore, I would suggest, that the jury in that case came back with a stunning verdict of homicide. Even though homicide within the context of coroner's court is quite different from the definition as applied under criminal law - the coroner's verdict is neutral, with no finding of culpability - it provided an astonishing indictment of Sick Kids and the nurses therein, at least those who were primarily tasked with the care of Lisa Shore, a child who should not have died and, as the jury all but scolded, would not have died, had the girl been properly monitored, doctors' instructions carefully followed and surgical staff summoned. The Lisa Shore jury made 35 recommendations, many of those directly proposed by Sharon Shore herself. None of the recommendations originated with the hospital or the nurses. It also became clear during the inquest that the coroner had been confronted with obstructive conduct by Sick Kids and some of its staff during the investigative phase, with the result that much critical information was revealed only at the inquest itself, under oath. Afterward, Sick Kids was sorry, so sorry. ``Clearly, the Hospital for Sick Children failed Lisa Shore and failed the Shore family, and we will live with that forever,'' declared Dr. Alan Goldbloom, vice-president of academic and clinical development at the world-famous institution. Forever appears not to have lasted very long. The problem, narrowly, is not that yet another patient - Sanchia - died on the same ward, in eerily similar circumstances, less than a year after the inquest, although their medical concerns were vastly different. (Lisa died 12 hours after arriving in emergency with acute but non-life-threatening chronic pain disorder, the residue of a schoolyard accident in which she suffered a broken leg. The child was put on morphine and her vital signs should have been monitored throughout that night. Instead, she was discovered dead in the morning during doctor's rounds, even as her mother - who'd spent the night on a couch in the hospital room - was just rousing herself from sleep.) In Sanchia's case, the teenager, who had sickle-cell anemia, had just had her gallbladder removed, and was then transferred from a post-surgery room to Ward Five A/B, the unit that cares for general surgery and orthopedic patients. Nearly two months later, the hospital - to be precise, Goldbloom, the chief operating officer of Sick Kids - announced it was taking ``full responsibility for the death of Sanchia Bulgin.'' Now there is a second coroner's inquest. But what the hospital adamantly does not want, what lawyers for nurses on Ward Five A/B do not want, is to face any interrogation from Mrs. Shore. She wants standing at the inquest. Those in opposition are fighting against it. That was the issue under consideration at a coroner's hearing yesterday afternoon, before Ontario Chief Coroner James Young, who will be conducting the Bulgin inquest when it gets underway later this month. But even before Young could hear arguments on the central matter, he had to deal with a preliminary conundrum - whether to accept Mrs. Shore's affidavit, in which she sets out the reasons why she should be given official standing. Lawyers for Sick Kids, and for two of the nurses identified by name in Mrs. Shore's affidavit, sought to have the affidavit thrown out, squashed, stomped on, sealed and otherwise vapourized. (Those nurses are the subject of disciplinary hearings already ordered by the Ontario College of Nurses. Further, the police homicide squad is also investigating the death of Lisa Shore, though nothing has been heard from that quarter in a long time.) I would like to provide for you, the reader, the significant contents of Mrs. Shore's affidavits, particularly the references to the two nurses, but Dr. Young ordered the affidavit sealed - this after ruling that he would accept that document for the purpose, specifically, of helping to make up his own mind on whether Mrs. Shore should be given standing. Follow? Kate Hughes, the lawyer representing the two named nurses (plus one other), had to be careful about expressing her clients' objections to the affidavit, because anything she read from that document would become a matter of public record. But, essentially, Hughes claimed that most of the affidavit's contents are prejudicial, inflammatory, irrelevant, improper, containing errors of law, errors of evidence (the finding of the Lisa Shore inquest was not ``negligence,'' as described by Mrs. Shore), damaging to the other legal proceedings underway against her clients, and inadmissible under the Coroner's Act. Kill it. Shore's lawyer, Geoffrey Adair, snorted at that. ``No matter how often my friend calls it prejudicial, inadmissible, irrelevant, etc. etc., that does not make it so.'' Young wouldn't quash. But he did put the affidavit safely beyond the reach of the media. For now. And the hearing, as originally designated, continued. Goldbloom took the stand. In his own affidavit, Goldbloom urged that Mrs. Shore not receive standing at the Bulgin inquest because: The clinical issues are different; the inquest recommendations from the Lisa Shore jury - which constitute Mrs. Shore's most urgent interest in participating at the second inquest, in the belief many of those recommendations have not been put into place - have no application to the Bulgin case; the nurses are fearful and intimidated by Mrs. Shore, thus should be shielded from her in coroner's court; and, perhaps most of all, because Mrs. Shore is aggressively critical of Sick Kids, all the time saying bad stuff about the place and, further, posting her grumblings on a personal Web site. This is not, by the way, a Web site the hospital had made any attempts to shut down - if it believes the contents therein to be libelous. Nor, says Mrs. Shore, had she ever received any complaints about the site before her application for standing at the Bulgin inquest. Mrs. Shore, Goldbloom said in his affidavit, had no direct and substantial interest in the Bulgin inquest, certainly not enough to justify her interrogative presence. That got up Adair's nose. ``Can you think of anyone here with a more direct and substantial interest in whether (the inquest) recommendations have been implemented than the parent of a child (who died), other than Mrs. Shore?" Goldbloom had no comment on that. As for the accusation of negligence as stated in Mrs. Shore's Web site, and the added remark that the two nurses identified are still employed by the hospital, Adair asked: ``Do you agree with me that the statement you have lifted from the Internet is something that many people in the community would agree with?'' Goldbloom: ``No, I don't.'' And why, exactly, were the nurses on the ward - none of those involved in the care of Sanchia were on the Lisa Shore watch - so fearful of facing Mrs. Shore, Adair wondered. ``What do you think she is going to do with these witnesses? Do you think she'll get up and beat them with a rubber hose?'' Goldbloom: ``It is their perception . . . that they are under attack. Not just the two nurses involved in the (first) inquest, but as a group . . . ``They are indeed fearful and feel intimidated.'' How lucky for them, and Sick Kids, that they have a whole bunch of high-powered lawyers to defend their interests, without concern for cost. Unlike the mother of a dead child.
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. E-mail:
dimanno@hotstar.net
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