THURSDAY July 3, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- A patient suffering
agitation and psychosis died at Kings County on June 19 while waiting without
care for nearly 24 hour in an emergency room at a public psychiatric ward in
Brooklyn, media reports.
Esmin Elizabeth Green, 49, was involuntarily taken to the
hospital by emergency medical service workers on June 18.
She was placed in a chair in the G Building,
the emergency room waiting for a room to become available.
Evidence from four surveillance cameras showed that Ms.
Green slid off her chair at 5:32 a.m. on June 19, nearly a whole day after she
was admitted.
About half an hour after she collapsed, a security guard
went over to look at her and then walked away leaving her there motionless and
doing nothing to help her.
The guard
came back later into the room, and then left again doing nothing.
A staff member also noticed Ms. Green lying there and went
over and prodded her with her foot, but doing nothing to help her.
The rescue staff members came in the room nearly one hour
after Ms. Green collapsed and tried to revive her, but it was too late.
A nurse falsified the patient's charts to indicate that Ms. Green was
ok at a time half hour after she died, media reports.
A spokeswoman for the city medical examiner was cited by The
New York Times as saying the cause of death was under investigation.
According to the times, the New York Civil Liberties Union
and others last year sued Kings County Hospital Center in federal court in
Brooklyn accusing the public hospital of "keeping psychiatric patients in
filthy conditions, systematically neglecting them and drugging them into
submission."
Because of the accident, the director of psychiatry, the
doctor on duty and the director of security at Kings County have been fired,
according to Ana Marengo, a spokeswoman for the Health and Hospitals
Corporation cited by the times.
Ms. Green's death also pushed the New York City's Health and
Hospitals Corporation to agree on Tuesday to step up monitoring of patients at
the psychiatric ward in Brooklyn.
The
agency agreed to settle the lawsuit filed by the Civil Liberties Union.
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