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Medical Ethics Procedures – Natasha Richardson

Keys: medical ethics … Natasha Richardson’s death … accident … medical neglect … procedures extreme sports … Liam Neeson marriage …

Who could not be moved by the news of Natasha Richardson’s death where it is reported as being almost six hours before she received medical treatment at a trauma center for her fall on the beginner ski slopes?

The preliminary medical treatment elsewhere was inadequate and delayed the time from her accident to receiving the right trauma treatment. Excuses were made for the delay, but no excuses can stand weight in this modern technological world, not even in Canada, which stands challenged by this sequence of events.

Now she is dead at age 45, leaving two young children and a stricken husband, Liam Neeson and a good marriage.

Our issue here is Medical Neglect.

We don’t accuse anyone personally. We were not there. We have only the BBC News to go by in following the events. But we do have some medical background.

Here are the neglect factors in the Natasha Richardson story.

1. Her personal ski instructor called the ski patrol right after her fall. No one knew if she had a hard fall in the news I read. Yet, why would the ski patrol be called? Is the ski instructor not telling the whole truth?

2. The emergency ambulance was called also but turned back when told not needed. This is the medical neglect area. Who told them not needed? Was it Natasha Richardson herself?

3. If as a medical person you are called to help someone who has just suffered an accident you keep to your mission. You check out for yourself the patient’s condition. You should be trained to do so. You should have signed a medical set of ethics that includes this responsibility.

4. You do not stop your mission even if the patient herself says she does not need assistance. The accident victim is to be judged not fully responsible for herself. This is what it means to have a head injury in a ski accident. Ski accidents should be assumed to be worse than they may seem, and always involve a head injury, until this possibility has been medically proven otherwise.

5. The medical and ski resort people should have asserted their responsibility to help an accident victim, even over the protests of their client if this happens. In an accident you must always assume the victim may not be in his or her right mind. This is clear neglect on the part of the ski instructor, the ski patrol, the resort personnel, the ambulance people, and the supervising doctor for the ski resort itself, who should be on call and available at least by phone throughout the ski day. Neglect here also. No doctor on call at a major ski resort? This itself should be considered legal neglect of all customers.

6. Further neglect was that no one around Natasha Richardson took responsibility to get her helicopter lifted out of there as soon as she had headaches. This points to neglect on the part of the ski resort and hotel people, who should of course know about these things since they run a ski resort.

7. Why was this resort not closed down immediately by government officials when their neglect and weaknesses in helping their accident victims became apparent, until procedures were clarified and personnel trained?

8. Natasha Richardson had the money obviously to get the best help possible. She had booked an expensive suite at the ski hotel. She was known as an actress and Liam Neeson’s wife. One call to him to get the helicopter authorized could have been made. Maybe this was even done but not reported in the news?

9. In summary, the ski instructor probably knew Natasha Richardson had possibly hit her head because he called the ski patrol, but the story reported was that this was only a beginner slope and they did not think she had taken much of a fall. Yet, why call the ski patrol? Why call the ambulance people and then turn them back? Why did not these people in charge of the welfare of Natasha Richardson act to the full extend of their responsibility?

MEDICAL ETHICS PROCEDURE REGARDING ACCIDENT VICTIMS

1. All medical personnel should always try and fulfill their responsibility to their clients needing help to the fullest extent possible, even with the possibility that the patient rejects being looked at or taken care of, or that another medical person asks you not to perform your duty.

2. Medical personnel should always try to get their patients the best medical help possible, even if certain actions seem extreme or not needed in the immediate time of the accident.

3. A person designated a patient because of immediate illness or accident should always be presumed not fully mentally responsible for their own condition and then overruled in their judgments with medical personnel taking responsibility for the patient’s welfare.

4. No medical personnel should ever rely on the judgments of the patient or others as the basis for their own medical decisions regarding the designated patient. Medical personnel should make their own best informed decisions based on their own experience and training.

5. Medical personnel called in to deal with a designated patient should always assume decision-making responsibility for a patient unless there is available and active another medical person who is taking charge and making decisions regarding the patient. Make sure that a medical person is in charge of a designated patient, and not the patient themselves, their family, or other people of authority around the patient.

6. If any officials or members of the immediate family, or the patient himself or herself, try to assert ultimate authority over their own welfare, the medical person best qualified to be in charge should ask the patient or others to give up decision-making responsibility to the medical person best qualified to be in charge. This can be gotten in writing when possible, and should be done as soon as possible.

7. In situations of greater risk, like a ski resort, all visitors using the facilities at risk should sign at the resort a statement giving decision-making authority to the medical person available should they chance to be in an accident. This procedure should be done ahead of time when possible.

8. A designated patient shall not be deemed medically examined unless the supervising medical person does a direct examination involving all of the following when possible: close observation, eye contact, touch with light manipulations of the whole head and neck area with patient response, taking an inventory of symptoms and accident incident, medical history, instructing patient in the medical procedure and agreement to give medical decision-making to the medical person in charge, review of the rest of the body for adverse symptoms, review of what the patient describes of him or herself, taking of blood pressure, and any other procedure of medical relevance.

9. Any medical personnel not carrying out the above procedures to the best of their abilities shall be presumed in neglect of their duties as medical personnel and therefore subject to a hearing to rectify their lack of understanding or lack of commitment to the above procedures with additional training imposed.

Author Medical Background

To give it briefly, this author worked for over two years on the medical ward of Norwalk State Mental Hospital in his young adult years. He also was trained in premedical studies. And as his adult career he worked as a psychotherapist in California who also had the power given him to recommend psychiatric confinement of severely disturbed patients, such as suicidal ones. Part of his therapeutic process with his clients was physical, such as acupressure massage, bodywork release and diagnosis of the client’s mental-physical condition, with referrals of course to medical doctors and psychiatrists when necessary.

For an accurate news summary of the tragic story see it at People: Natasha Richardson Death Story

ethics, medical ethics, Natasha Richardson, accident, medical neglect, procedures,

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