Shame on Aberdeen Hospital

Following is the article that appeared in the Pictou County News about Mr. John Williams...the victim of the Health Care System.



Commissionaire charged with assault
by JENNIFER VARDY LITTLE
The News


NEW GLASGOW – A Pictou County man spent his last days “terrified” after he was slapped and kicked by a security guard at the Aberdeen Hospital.
John “Jackie” Williams, 69, was “never the same” after a Sept. 16 incident with Nova Scotia Commissionaire Raymond Cameron, who allegedly struck the Alzheimer’s patient across the face with enough force to knock his glasses off, says Williams’ daughter, Bernice Theriault.
Williams had been admitted into the hospital in June when he had his first heart attack, which sped up the effects of his Alzheimer’s. While he was in ICU, the family made the difficult decision to apply for long-term care for him.
Theriault says her mother, June, has a health condition of her own and couldn’t care for him at home any longer, and her only sister in the county, Paula Pellerine, runs her own business and couldn’t provide enough help. Theriault lives near Bridgewater, while a third sister, Donna Boyle, resides in Calgary.
“We thought we were doing the right thing,” Theriault said softly. “Mom said at an Alzheimer’s support meeting that if she knew what he’d have to go through, she would’ve let him die at home from the heart attack he had that night.”
She believes the incident caused her father so much stress and concern it contributed to the heart attack he suffered two weeks later. He died Oct. 10.
“My father was a law-abiding citizen – if the speed limit was 90, he went 89, did everything by the letter of the law,” Theriault said. “I will believe forever that the added stress, the fear, the pressure, contributed to his heart attack. He knew something had happened.”
It was Williams himself who told his wife of the incident when she came to visit him an hour after it occurred.
“Dad was laying down in bed and told her, ‘I’m in big trouble.’ Mom told him, ‘No, you’re not.’ That’s when he told her a security guard slapped him across the face,” Theriault said.
“He was terrified. He was scared by the uniforms. Raymond Cameron is a big man – my father was big as well, but he wasn’t anywhere near as big as Raymond Cameron was.”

Her mom was left in absolute disbelief, she said. Moments later, a nurse called her into the hospital to fill her in on the details.
Theriault got the call that evening from her mother, who told her of the incident. The next morning, she drove to New Glasgow.
“My first thought? We have to get him out of there. Obviously, they couldn’t care less. We felt like he wasn’t safe,” she said.

The incident occurred around 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 16. Williams was a “wanderer,” meaning he often left his room to wander the 22-bed acute care unit on the fifth floor of the Aberdeen.
Ruby Knowles, community health and continuing care vice-president with the Pictou County Health Authority, says the physical set-up of the unit isn’t appropriate for people who wander, unlike an actual nursing home.
“We’re limited with our physical space – that’s left us to use patient sitters when individuals wander off,” she explained.
A commissionaire was usually assigned to sit outside his door and follow him around the unit, preventing him from leaving the floor. Before that arrangement was put in place, Theriault said, he’d sometimes leave the floor and have to be tracked down by commissionaires – and seeing the uniforms frightened Williams.
“They intimidated him,” she said.
On the day of the incident, Williams had knocked over a rocking chair while on his way to the elevator. Staff called for a second commissionaire – Cameron – to come to the floor and assist.
“By the time he got there, everything was calmed down,” Theriault said, but the sight of Cameron caused her father to become upset again.
An internal report conducted by the hospital says that’s when Williams kicked Cameron in the shins, and Cameron kicked him back.
Nurses brought a wheelchair and the report says Cameron pushed Williams into it, took him back to his room and slapped him in the face, knocking off his glasses.
“He acted like a bully,” Theriault said.
The incident sparked two investigations, one by the PCHA which concluded last week, and the other by the provincial Health Department, which the PCHA was required to contact under the Persons in Care Act. The second investigation is expected to wrap up at the end of the month.
The following day, the family contacted New Glasgow police who launched their own investigation. Cameron was charged with assault on Sept. 17 and was slated to be arraigned in court on Dec. 21 for the incident, but the family has been told the charges are going through the Adult Diversion Program.
That program allows a post-charge alternative to a court proceeding for minor criminal offences, and according to the Nova Scotia Justice website, resolution is accomplished faster and the offender is held more immediately accountable. The offender does not have a criminal record if they successfully complete the program.
It doesn’t sit well with Theriault.
“My understanding is that he confessed and it will be going through adult diversion – I’ve been told he likely won’t ever see the inside of the court room,” she said. “I hope we, as a family, have some say – I don’t want him doing community service in a seniors’ home.”
Cameron, who was not a direct employee of the hospital, but was part of a contracted service, is no longer allowed to work for the hospital.
Cameron did not return calls from The News on Thursday. He was a longtime town councillor in Westville, former police officer, former chairman of the town’s police board and last year’s Volunteer of the Year for Westville.

This may have been the most serious incident, but the family says this wasn’t the only one that occurred while Williams resided in the unit.
The first occurred Aug. 21, when Williams got up through the night and began wandering around his room looking for a bathroom.
“He had a mental block when it came to the bathroom,” Theriault said. “He’d open doors, looking for it. He’d even open the door to the bathroom and not recognize it.”
That night, he opened his roommate’s closet, who told Williams to get out of there. The two men exchanged words and Williams pushed him.
“They considered him the aggressor, so he was moved.”
The only bed available in the middle of the night was in a room the family dubbed the “storage room.” Once a four-bed unit, it now stored items like unused IV poles and walkers.
“This was a man with Alzheimer’s, whose brain works differently than you and me, who couldn’t even make it to the window to look out because of all these items,” she said.
The family didn’t know about the incident until the next morning, when Theriault’s sister, Pellerine, arrived to feed him breakfast.
“He couldn’t get the covers off the containers of food or pour the milk on his cereal, so she would go to the hospital every morning at 6:30 to feed him breakfast,” Theriault explained. “She saw the blanket my sister from Calgary had sent him in the room, and found my father in the lounge. He was still in his pajamas, so she was going to take him back to his room to get changed. The nurse told her she couldn’t go in there anymore.”
Williams remained in the room for four days, until the family complained. He was later moved to a private room.
“Unfortunately, he was not moved to an appropriate room the following day and was not actually moved until Monday,” said Knowles. “It shouldn’t have happened, we regret that it happened, and we certainly talked to staff as well.”
The second incident occurred Sept. 12, just days before Williams was abused. Pellerine was visiting again and wanted to help her father clean up.
When she pulled off his shirt, she discovered his torso covered with bruises, including a large bruise on the back of his upper arm that was deep purple in the centre.
“No one had any answers how that occurred,” Theriault said, but the family wonders and worries if this was an earlier incident of abuse that no one caught.
“That’s the first thing my sister said – she wondered if someone missed something, if that was how he got all those bruises.”

The Pictou County Health Authority has expressed deep regret that the incident ever occurred.
“We deeply regret the incident happened, and we’ve acknowledged that to the family – it was very, very difficult for the family,” said Knowles.
The fifth-floor unit was only set up two years ago, and Knowles says the PCHA is still working out the kinks.
“That’s no excuse for the assault, because there is no excuse for that.”
But the health authority is taking steps to ensure nothing like this ever happens again in their facilities. Since the incident occurred, the hospital has done an internal review to determine who the best personnel are to serve as a “patient sitter,” a role that has, in the past, been done exclusively by the commissionaires. The PCHA is also looking into additional training for those personnel who serve as one-on-one supervisors for patients, including how to work with patients with challenging behaviour.
The unit itself poses challenges as well. It’s not set up in the same way as a nursing home – there’s limited physical space, she said, and there are a limited number of beds. All 22 beds in the unit are typically full and often, long-term care patients often also occupy regular medical beds.
“We’re going to look at anything else we can do in our physical space to make the environment a little homier,” she added.
The PCHA is taking other steps in the wake of this incident, such as establishing a Caregiver’s Council with staff, patients and families where people can raise any concerns they have about the care long-term patients receive. Nursing homes usually have a similar council in place, Knowles added.
The PCHA will also follow any directives given from the provincial review, she said.
Lloyd Brown, executive director of the Alzheimer Society of Nova Scotia, said this incident should be looked at on two levels.
"We always have to have zero tolerance, no matter how and why it happens."
Brown said it should also be kept in mind that hospital emergency departments and acute care facilities are not designed to provide the kind of care needed by Alzheimer's patients.
"It's a system issue that needs to be dealt with at a system level…We are all called upon, it's sort of a heads-up so we try to avoid this happening in the future."

Jackie’s Journey
Theriault and her family, however, want assurances that no other family will ever go through this sort of thing.
“We were a family in crisis,” she says softly. “We’re no longer a family in crisis. My father’s gone. But they’re still out there.”
There are currently 6,997 long-term care beds in Nova Scotia – but there’s a waiting list of nearly 1,300 patients.
“In my opinion, what needs to come out of this is something to help those families in crisis,” she said.
Right now, only 40 hours of home care is available to families who choose to keep their loved ones at home while awaiting beds – something that’s nowhere near enough support, Theriault said.
She’s contacted the three Pictou County MLAs, Central Nova MP Peter MacKay, Premier Darrell Dexter and every other politician she can think of, campaigning for government support to increase the number of beds available to Alzheimer and dementia patients.
“The population is aging – by the time new beds get opened, the number of beds needed will double to 2,600,” she said. “The population of people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia is doubling every six months. We need to help these families before they get in crisis.”
That’s why the family has launched a fundraising campaign called Jackie’s Journey. The campaign will raise funds that will go to groups like the Alzheimer’s Support Group to help them lobby government for more assistance to Alzheimer’s patients.
Anyone interested in donating can mail a cheque to PO Box 3372, Stellarton, NS, B0K 1S0.