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Thestar.com
> GTA | | Jul. 17, 2001. 02:00 AM |
| Dead child's nurses silenced, panel told | | Hospital lawyers hampered probe, nurse says | Harold Levy
STAFF REPORTER | | The former chief nurse at the Hospital for Sick Children says she was hindered in her investigation of a 10-year-old girl's death because hospital lawyers told the young patient's two nurses not to talk. Jean Reeder was testifying yesterday at her appeal of a decision by the Ontario College of Nurses cautioning her for failing to investigate Lisa Shore's death, and for failing to probe the two nurses' treatment of other patients. The province's Health Professions Review and Appeal Board, which is hearing Reeder's appeal, is expected to deliver a decision in 90 days. Lisa died unexpectedly on Oct. 22, 1998 on Ward 5A/B of Sick Kids, after being admitted for recurring leg pain. An inquest was told her nurses failed to monitor her for effects of morphine. Reeder testified that, despite her limited information, she allowed nurses Ruth Doerksen and Anagaile Soriano to continue treating patients on the general surgery ward. Irvin Sherman, chair of the appeal panel, said he was shocked to hear the hospital had conducted no investigation of Lisa's death before Reeder tried unsuccessfully to get information from the two nurses for the first time in February, 1999. ``I find it hard to believe that after the unexpected death of this young lady that this hospital would not be jumping,'' he exclaimed. Reeder testified that after she summoned the nurses to hear their story, ``it quickly became clear that they had been advised by counsel not to talk to anyone.'' Asked why she didn't press the issue, Reeder said she thought it would be inappropriate because ``it would be coercion.'' Hospital spokesperson Cyndy De Giusti said in an interview that hospital lawyer Patrick Hawkins, who was representing both the hospital and nurses at the time, may have advised the nurses not to talk to anyone ``as the nurses' lawyer and not as the hospital's lawyer.'' Reeder testified she did not investigate at the time Lisa died because no one recognized nursing issues were involved until February, 1999. She also understood at the time that an investigation had been conducted by the hospital's risk management director, and that the two nurses had been interviewed in detail by a ``nursing manager.'' But the manager to whom the nurses reported administratively was not a nurse and there was no written record of any hospital investigation. Hawkins, who represented Reeder yesterday, told the panel ``an individual senior executive cannot be professionally accountable because something didn't come to her attention for four months.'' Asked by Sherman how she knew it was safe to allow the two nurses to continue to
practise, Reeder said she had read Lisa's hospital chart, talked to colleagues about the care the nurses had provided to other patients, and assessed their performance ``indirectly.'' Reeder, who now lives in the U.S., said she made the decision to allow the nurses to continue to care for patients in consultation with the nursing college, which informed her that as long as the nurses were not being fired, the hospital was under no obligation to report them. Doerksen and Soriano were placed on paid leave before an inquest into Lisa's death began in 1999. Police began an investigation into Lisa's death after the inquest ended with a ``homicide'' verdict - a neutral term indicating the taking of one person's life by another. That investigation continues. Sharon Shore, Lisa's mother, has launched complaints against the two nurses, alleging a failure to follow doctor's orders, hospital protocols or standard practice.
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