I heard about this on Good Morning America yesterday & it just made me sick! How could no one do anything. When we had to take my 2 year old son to the ER back in March while we were sitting in the waiting room waiting for ever, he threw up all over my dh-I mean all over him. I went to the desk to ask them if I could have a washcloth or towel to clean him up & the lady just looked at me & said she would see what she could do. I finally just walked over to their sink & grabbed some of those brown paper towels that don't work a darn & cleaned him up! When it happened again I was holding him & my dh was outside & a nice lady that was there in the waiting room with her daughter got up & got me a washcloth & helped me clean it up.
Now my situation was nothing like what happened to this poor lady at all-it just amazes me how this can happen!!

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Mommy to Ariana 8/11/01 & Davis 4/11/05
I love my kiddos!

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Yes I think this is sick, tragic, and wrong on so many levels. There is a lesson to learn from this though--take care of your health because preventative medicine is best. I want to hear the full story, was she seen numerous times for her gallstone problems, was she set up for surgery and didn't show (I've seen that happen), how long was her symptoms going on, her boyfriend didn't speak English-did she (could they communicate well enough or was a translator not available). A simple CT would have showed the perf bowel, and yes I think it is horrible that a woman had to die on a floor in her own blood she vomitted so don't flame me but this could have been prevented. Her baseline problem was gallstones. I work at a state hospital and plently of patients get free medical care because they don't have insurance and never pay a dime so options are out there. Abdominal pain is not something to just ignore and it's very tragic that no one did anything. How long had she been having the pain? How many times did she try and see a doctor?

I think administrators and doctors should be fired. One doctor and one nurse have been so far. I want to know more about why the nurse was fired. She can't order tests, procedures, blood work, ng tubes, etc---only the doctor can so why is she the fall guy. Yes she can bring problems to doctors attention but she can't order anything.

I wonder if it was the triage nurse. It isn't up to the doctors to say which patients are to be seen first. It is the job of the triage nurse to evalute each patient who comes into the ER and then she/he decides who is seen in what order depending upon the seriousness of their illness or injury.