'it's a nightmare': family condemns daughter's care after death in hospital
8 minute read
we apologize, but this video has failed to load.
try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
brian and gwen gilbert visit their daughter’s gravestone daily, rarely missing an afternoon at the regina cemetery.
back at home, photos and flowers in memory of 50-year-old andrea parmar fill a table near the living room window. their daughter — a sister, wife and mother of two teenage sons — died a year ago. their grief endures, the pain of loss compounded by the circumstances surrounding it and the answers they still can’t find.
“sometimes, it’s a nightmare to me — it still is,” says gwen. “my daughter passed away from neglect.”
parmar was trained as a psychiatric nurse, and worked as a counsellor and long-term care aide. she was also an author and motivational speaker on mental illness and eating disorders, from which she was successfully recovering, and an enthusiastic hockey mom.
“andrea was probably one of the most naturally compassionate, caring people that you could ever know,” said brian. her family fears she didn’t receive that same treatment when she needed it most.
family questions hospital care
with concerning respiratory symptoms, parmar was admitted to the yorkton regional care centre intensive care unit on march 31, 2022. four days later, she passed of cardiorespiratory arrest and pneumonia, linked to covid-19. for her family, what caused her death is irrelevant; what haunts them is the care she received in those days leading up to it.
advertisement
“we feel very bad about the way she was treated in the icu, because that’s not the way she treated people,” said gwen.
parmar’s parents filed complaints to health authorities and regulatory bodies but say attempts to seek accountability have yielded little acknowledgment of any fault or need for change.
speaking for the family, gwen believes parmar didn’t receive a one-to-one standard of care expected in an icu unit, and that physicians in emergency and icu failed to treat her condition as serious.
parmar had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2016, noted as an underlying condition at the time of her hospital admission, prompting her parents to ask why she wasn’t treated as a more critically vulnerable patient, given that and other medical history.
frustrated, the family filed multiple complaints outlining their concerns. they have approached the hospital more than once, triggering an internal review by the patient advocate that saw a third-party doctor in the region review the events leading to parmar’s death.
family also submitted conduct complaints to the college of physicians and surgeons of saskatchewan (cpss), in 2022, and the college of registered nurses of saskatchewan (crns) just one month ago. both found no wrongdoing by named staff.
advertisement
still, the family finds those responses unsatisfactory. parmar’s sister kim gilbert said replies from cpss and the hospital answered “less than half” of the family’s questions, and sanitized details about the morning her sister passed.
she said they rely on details from charts, and the account from a doctor who wasn’t present when parmar went into distress.
“there is no humanity in the responses,” said brian. “they’re just mechanical.”
‘no accountability and no disciplinary action’
the leader-post has obtained copies of those complaints and responses. each review offered condolences, but “no accountability and no disciplinary action at all,” said kim. from the responses, brian and gwen feel as though the institutions are hiding behind procedure.
parmar, who lived outside regina, initially attended yorkton’s emergency department on saturday, march 26, 2022 with shortness of breath, a fever and pneumatic symptoms. a physician sent her home.
as her condition worsened by monday, she was admitted to esterhazy hospital, then transferred to yorkton’s icu by ambulance that afternoon. over her four-day stay, parmar told several family members that nurses regularly didn’t respond to requests for help, such as for bathroom trips, and weren’t often in her room.
advertisement
she was placed on a ventilator due to low oxygen levels, and went into serious respiratory distress in the early hours of thursday, march 31.
according to a timeline of events pieced together by family in their complaint to yorkton’s patient advocate, an on-call attending physician was called around 4 a.m. and relayed care orders verbally. after a second call, around 7:40 a.m., he arrived at 8:15 a.m., about four hours after the first call.
by then, a respiratory therapist had already ordered intubation, and a code blue, or an emergency alert for a cardiac arrest, had been called.
a nurse first contacted parmar’s husband about his wife’s critical condition at 7:30 a.m. he could hear nurses yelling in the background as parmar’s heart stopped.
when her husband and sons arrived within the hour, they were shown to the room where parmar lay dead, her body still attached to life support and exposed.
“they are scarred for life, after seeing their mom like that,” gwen said, of her grandsons.
doctor believed ‘appropriate steps’ were taken
in his complaint, parmar’s husband noted this was the first time he’d spoken with the attending physician. he insists he was not warned before entering the room with his sons, despite what the physician states in his response to the cpss complaint.
advertisement
the physician offered an apology for leaving parmar in that state before the family entered, writing he “thought seeing the equipment would assure mr. parmar every possible effort had been made to save his wife.” the report indicates the doctor has since discontinued that practice, given this family’s distress.
further, the physician also wrote the family wasn’t alerted sooner because a coherent parmar didn’t ask for such a call, that he didn’t attend immediately upon the first call because he believed staff on shift were capable of managing the situation, and what occurred was “according to protocol.”
according to the documents, the doctor believed “appropriate steps” were taken in parmar’s care, but her condition deteriorated quickly.
“no further medical intervention could have saved her life in the circumstances,” he wrote.
family members aren’t convinced.
“if she had had proper care, she would still be here with us,” insists sister tammy holmes.
the family notes parmar was on morphine for pain management and dangerously low on oxygen, so couldn’t have been fully coherent that morning to make requests. they feel the doctor’s delay attending a critical patient was also a failure as the lead of her medical team.
advertisement
her parents said there has also been only vague explanation offered as to why nurses weren’t paying closer attention to parmar, despite having flagged her low oxygen levels and knowing she had dislodged her oxygen mask repeatedly through the night while sleeping.
when her husband asked why the nurse on duty didn’t notice parmar becoming critical, the hospital’s social worker told him the nurse had left the room to chart.
the family also still wonders why consultation to have parmar transferred to a larger facility with more respiratory resources wasn’t considered. the physician said her condition was “relatively stable” before her sudden decline on march 31.
gwen gilbert and bryan gilbert hold a picture of their late daughter andrea parmar, née gilbert, who died in the yorkton hospital icu at the end of march in 2022, of covid-19 related complications. the portrait is taken in the gilbert home on monday, march 27, 2023 in regina.
kayle neis
/
regina leader-post
the saskatchewan health authority declined an interview request from the leader-post about the internal review done in parmar’s case “in the interest of patient confidentiality,” but offered a written statement.
“comprehensive reviews occur when concerns are brought forward and are used to guide improvements to the quality of care,” said an email.
“if those concerns are not met, then patients and next of kin have the option to take their concerns further to the provincial ombudsman and regulatory bodies involved.”
advertisement
‘improvement initiatives’ introduced
in a written response to the gilberts earlier this march, yorkton’s director of acute care janna-lea yawney said the family’s concerns have been shared with staff and weekly meetings include reminders on professionalism and confidentiality. she also indicated the hospital has added cards to patient charts with communication directives.
“as a team, we are confident that your concerns have resulted in improvement initiatives,” wrote yawney.
legislation under the medical profession act prohibits the cpss from commenting on closed reviews by the quality of care advisory committee that result in no charge of unprofessional conduct. the crns did not respond to a similar request from the leader-post.
as outlined on the cpss website, the committee reviews “all of the available information, including the physician’s response” in complaints like the gilberts.
“appointing a preliminary inquiry committee is a serious matter as it can affect a physician’s reputation. dismissing a complaint without an investigation by a preliminary inquiry committee is also a serious matter,” reads the site.
the college notes the investigation process can result in an inquiry, immediate disciplinary action or a less formal action as resolution, such as an apology — which the doctor offered in response to the complaint from parmar’s family.
advertisement
‘she was like a bright, shining light’
gathered in their home in university park, parmar’s loved ones paint an image of a warm person who found joy in kindness and excelled at connecting with people.
“she was like a bright, shining light in the room,” said brian.
in the darkness of their grief, nearly a full year after their loss, the gilberts emphatically repeat their call for action by the health authority and the regulatory associations.
kim said hospitals, especially those outside the province’s major centres, need to be more forthcoming in admitting whether they are equipped with specialized resources to provide care for complex patients.
“we have to live with all this baggage, of what happened, for the rest of our lives,” gwen said.
“we just don’t want to see anybody — any family of any mother, daughter, sister — to have to go through this,” added holmes.
kim said the call comes from trying to prevent further misery, but also because it’s something parmar would have wanted.
“we continue to do this for andrea,” said kim. “it’s all for her, because she deserves that.”
the news seems to be flying at us faster all the time. from covid-19 updates to politics and crime and everything in between, it can be hard to keep up. with that in mind, the regina leader-post has created an afternoon headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox to help make sure you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. click here to subscribe.
advertisement
the regina leader-post has created an afternoon headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. click here to subscribe.
with some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark leaderpost.com and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. click here to subscribe.
share story
