Remember the FL woman who was kicked out of the hospital and died? The video was released

[pnwmom]

Last edited Tue Feb 9, 2016, 06:03 PM - Edit history (3)

and it turns out the police were lying. They didn't promptly get her medical care.

After she collapsed in the parking lot - from a pulmonary embolism -- it was 18 minutes before the police called for help.

So first the hospital made an inexcusable error. They decided to discharge a patient over her objections, without doing standard tests for her symptoms, even though she was panic stricken and insisting she couldn't breathe (even though she was hooked up to oxygen). And then, when they called the police -- because she refused to leave -- disconnected her oxygen, and sent her out with the police, the police compounded the error, by not getting help as soon as she collapsed.

So she lay propped up against the car for 18 minutes, dying.

http://www.sfltimes.com/healthfitness/woman-lay-in-parking-lot-18-minutes-later-died

The recording is roughly 2 1/2-hours long, but only the first half covers what happened at the hospital. The recording begins with the officer arriving at the hospital. He enters Dawson’s hospital room and tries to persuade her to leave. The officer tells Angela Donar, who is Dawson’s aunt and also in the room, “she can walk out peacefully or be arrested.”

Dawson repeatedly replies, “I can’t breathe.” Her tone is panic-stricken.

After refusing to seek health care elsewhere, Dawson is arrested for disorderly conduct and trespassing. The oxygen hose is disconnected and the officer walks the 270-pound woman out to the police car, holding her by the arm, nudging her along.

Dawson falls to the ground 1 to 2 feet from the patrol car while the officer reaches for his keys. Dawson cut her feet and knees.

After she collapses, the officer tells Dawson that “falling down and laying down, that’s not going to stop you from going to jail. If I have to get help to get you in this car. You are only making things worse on you.”

For 18 minutes she lay propped against the police cruiser as the officer and nurses made multiple attempts to get her into the car. The nurses also checked her pulse. Not until a doctor came out was she readmitted.

http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2016/01/29/calhoun-liberty-hospital-panel-meets/79528300/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=

Task force members brought in to make changes at the Calhoun Liberty Hospital met for the first time Thursday, a month after the death of a woman that prompted its creation.

Mostly an organizational meeting, the nine-person group — hospital administrators, doctors and a pharmacist, community leaders, clergy and university medical program leaders — outlined their main goals.

The panel was convened after 57-year-old Barbara Dawson collapsed in the hospital’s parking lot Dec. 21 and later died after a Blountstown police officer was called to remove her from the premises.

SNIP

The most pressing issue the group wants to address is access to health care and heath standards in the two rural counties. The hospital serves as a primary care facility for 23,000 people, which puts stress on the emergency facility’s staff.

In addition, the task force is looking at boosting professional development, updating policies and procedures and improving communication with hospital staff and the community.


THE WRITTEN POLICE REPORT IS HERE:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027597094

[valerief]

1. Yes, but in the police's defense, she was black. I think that's considered a defense

in racist Florida.

[pnwmom]

2. Yeah, right.

I identified her as being African American in another OP, and someone asked me why I was bringing up her race.

As if that wasn't obvious. It's hard to believe her race wasn't a factor in how she was treated.

[valerief]

3. Exactly. It ought to be a crime. Wait! Isn't it? Hard to tell in these surreal times. nt

[Yo_Mama]

7. By the hospital, very probably, although this may be a case of Black-Without-Good-Insurance.

But by the officers? They were told before they even took her out that she was faking.

This is a very tragic death. However, unlike the Gray case, this is not a matter of police not seeking medical care for someone in their charge. This is a case of police being summoned to a hospital to remove a patient who claimed that she could not safely leave the hospital.

Were they supposed to bring her back in five minutes after they took her out? I'm sure the doctors would have told them to take her out again!

[pnwmom]

8. Yes. They should have called a doctor as soon as she passed out, not waited 18 minutes.

You don't know what the doctor would have said since he wasn't able to examine her. A doctor would have been able to see that she wasn't conscious.

[Yo_Mama]

12. Well, it seems like they got a nurse there and let her make the decision.

I have to believe she was more qualified than the police.

They also asked her if she wanted to go to another facility.

There are many, many times when the police are to blame, but here I don't see it.

The woman died. It's not as if she died because the police threw her around. This poor lady seems to have died because of a medical mistake (they believed she could be and should be released), and when she demurred, instead of checking her again, the hospital contacted the police to remove her.

This is quite, quite shocking and horrifying, but it is not police brutality or negligence.

[pnwmom]

13. She needed to stay there, not go to another facility, quite a distance away.

This was a small town without a choice of hospitals, and she understood that she was dying, even if they didn't.

I think both the hospital and the police were negligent. The hospital while they had her under their care, and discharged her without doing proper testing. And the police, because she was walking when she left the hospital -- and then collapsed in the parking lot. That should have been the signal for the police to immediately call in a doctor, and they didn't. When police have a suspect in their custody, it is their job to keep that suspect alive -- and to immediately summon for help if that person goes unconscious. Which she did.

I think the nurse barely looked at her. The police report said they had her sitting on the ground, handcuffed, propped against the car. It also claimed that the nurse took her pulse and blood oxygen in that position -- and everything was normal. And then they decided they wanted a more accurate result, so they un-handcuffed her.

But how could they have gotten that first blood oxygen count they claimed the nurse had taken while she was sitting against the car in handcuffs? It uses a device that goes on a finger.

And the description of what the nurse said afterwards didn't match what the police officer said. He claimed that the nurse had checked her vitals several times, but that's not what the nurse says. And you can't hear it on the audio either, except at the very beginning and the very end . . . when someone says she has a pulse of 7.

[Yo_Mama]

4. On this one, I don't blame the officers but the hospital.

They were brought in to remove her. They were told by the hospital to ignore her claims of not feeling well - that they were false.

It seems to me that they were put in an impossible position, and they are being blamed for not overriding the medical judgment of the doctors.

[pnwmom]

14. Bottom line: when she left the hospital she was capable of walking. When she collapsed

Last edited Wed Feb 10, 2016, 01:49 PM - Edit history (1)

that changed everything. The police have no excuse for not getting a doctor to check her out. Her condition was changed and they just ignored it.

The police report is self-contradictory. It says they had her positioned sitting up against the car, with her hands in handcuffs. In that position the nurse supposedly took her pulse and her blood oxygen.

And the results were supposedly normal.

Then, the report said, to get a more accurate results (why would they think the first results were not accurate?), they took off the handcuffs and took her pulse again.

I don't understand how the only reported results, a 97% for blood oxygen, was even taken. Because the police report says that was taken while she was still in handcuffs. When her hands were behind her back and she was slumped against the car.

How would the nurse manage that test then? The instrument is a device that goes on a finger.

[mythology]

20. But if the police had been told she was faking

why would you expect them to believe her collapse was real? I am healthy and can fall to the ground pretty convincingly if I wanted to. Munchausens is a thing as is drug seeking behavior.

The hospital failed to properly diagnose her. They gave the police information that was then acted upon. I don't know enough about what went on in the hospital to say if I would have agreed she was faking or not.

But using the fact that she died as proof that somebody did something wrong isn't entirely fair as you are using post incident knowledge to condemn somebody who didn't have that knowledge. You're being results oriented instead of process oriented. If trained medical professionals felt she was faking, I'm generally inclined to listen to what they had to say.

[pnwmom]

21. Doesn't matter. They were told she was faking when she said she couldn't breathe.

Collapsing was a new symptom. It should have occurred to them that perhaps the doctors were wrong.

What was the risk to the police in calling in a doctor just to make sure? Zero.

[hfojvt]

10. actually in the police's defense

they were just going by what the hospital said - that she was fine to go. As such, when she fell to the ground, they figured she was probably just faking to be non-cooperative. They actually did get medical help right away, according to the story. It says there was a nurse attempting to get her in the car, and also taking her pulse. Why not a doctor? Well, doctors are busy. A nurse is your first step and presumably has the training and knowledge to know if a doctor is needed.

Of course, people have their limitations. They may or may not have seen a case like yours (or hers). When I went to the hospital I told them "I cannot swallow" and they asked "What do you mean by that?" I am thinking to myself "there are four words there, which one didn't you understand?"

Except they understood just fine - they just didn't believe me. In somewhat the same way, this woman says "I cannot breathe" and they didn't believe it. After all, they can see her breathing and hear her talking, so she must be able to breathe.

I am not clear on the story. Did the hospital say "We will not treat her?" or did they say "she does not need treatment?" The story does not say. Either way, THEY are the ones who called the cops to have her removed. It does say that she refused to seek medical help elsewhere. Which would tend to make a person think "she is not really sick".

It's probably as much about money as anything else. If she had money or some kind of insurance, they usually would be happy to at least do a walletectomy (where they attach leeches to your wallet and bleed you of your cash).

[pnwmom]

11. The report said that she was propped up against the car, and that after they

first took the pulse -- which was supposedly normal - they removed the handcuffs to get a more accurate one.

How could they get that first measurement at all? And how could they measure her oxygen level with her hands behind her back and her propped against the car? (The device for measuring oxygen goes on a finger.)

And if you read the police written transcript (I've added a link at the very end), it's very vague about how many times the nurse checked her vitals, what was checked, and what the results were.

Also, supposedly the doctor got out there right after a nurse said her vitals were normal. And yet the doctor instantly recognized her condition and had her brought back inside where they immediately began CPR.

The whole thing seems very questionable to me.

[pnwmom]

16. But how can hospital personnel not understand that "I can't breathe" is a TYPICAL

way of indicating "shortness of breath," and that "shortness of breath," combined with the pain she had already described to them, should have made them rule out serious causes - like a pulmonary embolism?

It it is a MYTH that being able to talk or yell means a person is breathing fine -- and medical personnel understand that even if laypeople don't.

She refused help elsewhere because SHE knew she was in an emergency -- her body was telling her so -- and the nearest hospital was far away in another town. Effectively, she died in the parking lot, proving herself right. They brought her inside and gave her CPR, but it was already too late.

[hfojvt]

23. see but that goes back to the responsibility of the hospital

the doctors and nurses there, and NOT to the cop.

From the way a nurse was quoted as saying "I have never seen Barbara so bad." Using her name like that, I get the feeling that they had treated her in the past for a number of fairly imaginary complaints.

Possible that she had an ailment they should have caught a long time ago too, except they are not gonna run a whole bunch of tests on somebody who is not paying.

But that is all speculation, except I would wonder why they wouldn't be happy to treat a seeming hypochondriac who was paying.

[pnwmom]

24. No, it doesn't excuse the cop. The cop had her in his custody,

handcuffed, when her health status suddenly changed. She was able to walk out of the hospital and across the parking lot. It was his job when she collapsed -- and stayed unconscious -- to get a doctor to see her.

That voice you heard (which was probably the aunt who was with her) was telling the policeman that she WAS bad -- even though he was insisting Barbara was fine. There was no reason to infer from that that Barbara had been treated for "fairly imaginary complaints " or that she was a hypochondriac. Why didn't the policeman listen to that woman who was telling him that she'd never seen Barbara "so bad" when he was trying to get Barbara to stand up? Clearly that woman was arguing (repeatedly) that he should take her collapse more seriously.

Barbara Dawson did have a lot of health problems. That didn't make them imaginary. She had an oxygen tank due to these medical problems.

That officer made her wait for 18 minutes before CPR. He gets at least partial blame. If she'd still been in the hospital when this happened, she would have been treated when she collapsed.

http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/health/2016/01/06/dash-cam-video-barbara-dawson-case-released/78373064/

She repeatedly asked for her oxygen tank before she collapsed in the parking lot and was brought back inside the hospital, where she died a half-hour later due to a blood clot in her lung, an autopsy found.

[hfojvt]

25. I am not hearing anything

just reading a story which says

"For 18 minutes she lay propped against the police cruiser as the officer and nurses made multiple attempts to get her into the car. The nurses also checked her pulse. Not until a doctor came out was she readmitted.

“Get her on the stretcher. This is totally different from what I discharged her for,” the doctor says on the recording.

The Blountstown police officer who arrested Dawson is heard saying that he thought Dawson “was being non-compliant by not trying to get in my car and faking it.”

When Dawson was brought back into the emergency room, one of the nurses is heard saying, “I’ve never seen Barbara down like this.”"

From that it sounds like there were nurses - plural, you know, health care professionals with far more training than a cop. THEY were not calling for a doctor, so why should he?

From that last quote, with a nurse saying "I've never seen FIRST NAME ..." Says to me "I have seen Barbara a lot." Or at least a fair amount.

Now if it was the aunt talking earlier, then this article reported it wrong.

[pnwmom]

26. I listened to the audio and it isn't clear who the woman is who says, "I've never seen Barbara

down like this." That woman said several other things, too. She sounded very anxious and concerned and was trying to get the police officer to believe that Barbara needed help. I know from many of the reports that her aunt WAS with her, so it's likely that the voice was her aunt.

But this is a small town, with a 25 bed hospital , and Barbara Dawson was in poor health --- with an oxygen tank. If you've ever lived in a small town, you'd know that everyone tends to know everyone else, so it wouldn't be significant for a nurse to call a patient by her first name.

But let's pretend you're right. Even if it WAS a nurse and she HAD seen Barbara a lot -- SO WHAT? Barbara was in poor health with an oxygen tank. That didn't make her a malingerer.

JUST FOR THE HECK OF IT COULD YOU TRY LISTENING TO THE AUDIO? Then see if you feel the same way you do after reading the news reports. And while you listen, keep in mind that we now know that Barbara wasn't faking. She really was dying. Imagine the suffering she went through because first the hospital staff and then the police officer wouldn't believe her.

[hfojvt]

29. now I remember

I expected to watch a video, but at neither link in your OP did I find a link to an audio.

Blountstown in 2,500 people. I've lived for 8/9 years in a town of 5,000 and for 3 years in a village of 1,500. I did not know that many people in either town. I mean, I had a business on the main street and thought I knew everybody. One day I decided to make a list of all the people I knew by name. It was only about 400 people - in a town of 5,000 and a county of 17,000.

My point about seeing her a lot, is that she MAY have had a lot of complaints that were imaginary. I have known such people, always complaining about something or other.

Hindsight is always 20/20. The doctors, nurses, and cops did not have that benefit in real time. I was not there and do not have the training or knowledge to second guess them, am only saying that - medical professionals were there, so why expect a cop to over-rule them?

Actually I heard the same thing about one of my neighbors. 45 years old, went to the hospital complaining of chest pains, they sent him home. That night he died of a heart attack. Nurses and doctors are not perfect. Perhaps especially in small towns.

[pnwmom]

32. Here's the audio, and my attempt at a partial transcript.

While she’s in the hospital, you can HEAR her shortness of breath – her huffing and puffing, the way her voices fades off at the ends of her sentences. Even though she is on the oxygen tank at that time.

You can also hear the police officer talking to a woman and asking if she’s Barbara’s ride. Barbara is with at least one female relative – I think she has two females with her, both of whom try to speak up on Barbara’s behalf.

Below is what I could manage to type from the video. It’s incomplete but it gives the idea. There are several women’s voices. Two sound like family members, arguing on her behalf. One points out that Barbara is always supposed to be using the oxygen tank that they’ve just disconnected her from. The other women are either hospital staff or police officers.

The police report claims that Barbara’s vitals were checked several times. However, you can only hear this happening twice. Once after she collapses; and again at the very end, when a woman’s voice says her heart rate is 7.

And while you listen to this, think about the fact that she is experiencing great pain from the clot in her lungs and that she is experiencing extreme stress and anxiety from the shortness of breath.

Officer: ‘I’ve given you all the chances in the world.”

“I’m gonna die.”

“They’re going to kill me”

‘They’re not going to kill you. They begged you to leave and you wouldn’t do it.

‘Don’t take that off please’’ (her oxygen tube)

Female’s voice: “You haven’t been hooked up for a while and you’re breathing just fine.’

“Please, please, I can’t go no more. Please, help, they’re going to kill me”

‘please no, no please god help me, help me, I can’t breathe help me please help
help me no, please god help me I can’t . . . uh . . uh

Officer: ‘What’s wrong?, Please don’t fall down. Ms. Dawson, you were yelling, Ms. Dawson, falling down like this, laying down, won’t stop you from going to jail. ‘

A woman is objecting. (Probably Barbara’s relative.)

‘Ma’am ain’t nothing happened to her.”

Two women’s voices, both arguing on Barbara’s behalf:

“She is sick. “
“She is not okay.”
“She’s not okay.”
“She’s got a lot of health problems.”
“She does have a lot of health problems.”

Officer: “Mrs. Dawson, this is only making things worse on you. You need to comply with us. You need to get up. You need to get in the car, okay. . . . “

Officer-- Check her real quick?
Nurse -- Other hand. Come on now. There ain’t nothing wrong with you. She’s 98%. She’s fine. She’s just trying to get out of it.

Officer: “Ms. Dawson, we need you to get up, okay.
Nurse (female) “Ms. Dawson, get up, there’s nothing wrong with you. And I know you can hear us.”
[they try unsuccessfully to get her into the car, order a van because she’s “refusing’ to get in the vehicle.]

Woman; "That girl is sick!"

Nurse: 'for somebody that can’t breathe without the oxygen, you’re putting it off that much longer!"

Woman: “Supposed to have oxygen on all the time.”

Officer: “We’re trying to be as nice as we can. . . You can help us and help yourself, or you can do it the hard way.”

One of the woman laughs while trying to get her in the car.

Minutes pass while they stand around and wait to hear if a police van can come and help.

Nurse’s voice calls out sharply: “Bob! Bob! Bob! Bob! Bob!”

Nurse’s voice: “her heart rate is 7.’

[tblue37]

18. Why couldn't you swallw? That's scary. nt

[hfojvt]

22. it was scarier the first time

because at first I felt like I could not breathe. But then I took a few breaths and said to myself "okay, I can breathe."

The other unpleasant part about it is waterboarding myself. That is, food is stuck in my throat, so I try to push it through with a drink. Instead the liquid goes down my windpipe and I am left gasping and spitting it out.

TMI, but I have been having "swallowing incidents" for decades, even going to that hospital multiple times.

This particular time I went to the doctor's office, because I finally had health insurance. At first he just wrote me a scrip for prevacid, and was about to send me on my way. So I had to tell him "I cannot swallow - RIGHT NOW." He was like "SAY WHAT? You need to goto the hospital right now!!!"

That was my first EGD (now I have had four). The doctor said it was like I was trying to swallow through a swizzle stick, my esophagus was so constricted.

[justiceischeap]

5. I loved the very learned advice the cop gave her when she said she couldn't breathe

You're arguing with me so you can obviously breathe.

I remember when I was having issues with my gallbladder before having it removed. When I would have an attack, it felt like I imagine a heart attack would but it also caused me shortness of breath (which was very frightening) but I could still talk and walk.

[pnwmom]

9. Yes, and people having an asthma attack can talk until their airway closes completely.

The same with the lung problem she had. The point is to treat them before their oxygen is completely cut off.

And for a policeman to call for a doctor as soon as a person in custody passes out.

[Delphinus]

6. Oh,

how awful! I am unsure how I missed this. Every person deserves better than this - so very wrong.

[Logical]

15. She deserves a lot of money. But the citizens will pay and no cop punished. Typical. nt

[wildeyed]

17. She won't get any money.

Because she is dead now. And somebody should pay for this heartless incompetence.

[Blue_Tires]

19. ttt

[Turbineguy]

27. I had a pulmonary embolism.

It's pretty scary. I could not catch my breath. The EMS people who came suggested it might be a heart attack. At any rate, I got a nice ride to the hospital where it took them very little time to determine the problem.

[pnwmom]

33. Can you imagine being treated like this woman while you were in the midst of that?

And them insisting that because she could speak and cry out for help, that she wasn't having trouble breathing?

It horrified me to listen to this thing.

[Kalidurga]

28. She would probably still be alive if she had an extra 500 a month for health insurance.

[pnwmom]

30. You don't know that she didn't have insurance, but it isn't the fault of Obamacare

that Florida turned down the Medicaid expansion. She could have had insurance through a job or, if she made too much for Medicaid, but was low income, she could have gotten a heavily subsidized policy.

What i read, however, is that the hospital was trying to limit the average length of hospital stays for everyone -- because that is part of the metrics that hospitals are judged by.

[Kalidurga]

31. Well we come to a point of several agreements.

One problem I have with a proposal to measure hospitals based on the health outcomes of patients is that I think it will have hospitals limiting how many very sick people they will treat.

Two I don't know she didn't have insurance, but it's very likely given how quick they were to throw her out when she was obviously distressed.

Three I don't blame Obama care for this at all. There are still a lot of people with no insurance and who are under insured. We have to have a system where everyone gets health care and hospitals aren't concerned about their bottom lines only if their patients are medically treated.