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My seventy-one year old mother Elaine Sullivan, a vibrant woman, living on her own, who slipped and fell in her bathroom at home in Chicago. A neighbor found her and sent for the paramedics, who took her to a local hospital. Although doctors and nurses noted that she was unable to give them a medical history or give consent for her treatment, the hospital didn't make any effort to call us (or her personal physician or HMO), for six days. Despite the fact that they had my phone number right on the cover sheet of her chart, every consent and admission form simply remained unsigned.
According to their
records, the hospital and physicians missed an open cut on
my mother’s foot, which quickly led to a staph
infection. They neglected to feed her, failed to take blood
cultures, or to give her the aggressive antibiotics she
needed. By the fifth day, she was in critical condition and
in intensive care.
My daughter Laura and I
are a mother and daughter writing team and live in Los
Angeles. Since my
mother was supposed
to have left for vacation that week, we had no idea she'd
been hospitalized. By the time the hospital got in touch
with us – nearly seven days after her admission – it was
clear that we wouldn't make it to Chicago in time to be with
her. Even though we pleaded with the physicians and the
nursing staff to get a phone to her, so she could at least
hear our voices for what would probably be the last time,
they totally refused.
Soon after she passed
away, unnecessarily and completely alone.
When
my daughter Laura and I found out how long she had actually been
hospitalized, our grief turned to action, trying to find a way
to keep the same thing from happening to anyone else. We began
to hear similar stories from families nationwide -
circumstances where people had been injured in accidents or had
fallen ill at home, and were hospitalized for hours, days or in
some cases weeks, without so much as a phone call to the
patient's spouse, family or emergency contact.
We were positive the hospital must have broken a law by not calling me for six and a half days. But through research, we discovered something incredible. There wasn't one Illinois, California or federal law that required a hospital to contact a patient's family, even if the patient is unconscious or unable to communicate. In my mother's case that simple act would have saved her life. Not only would we have known she had been hospitalized, enabling us to be with her, but it also would have enabled us to give her physicians the medical history they needed to prevent complications that ended up claiming her life. We also would have been able to see that she received the care that she deserved.
That's when we decided to partner with legislators to create
the Next of Kin Law.
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The Next of Kin
Education Project is a Project of NOKR, Inc. a 501(c)(3) organization.
Contributions to NOKEP are tax deductible.
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©
2007
Next of Kin Education Project
Contact NOKEP
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