Angela Salvatore had been away from her father’s hospital bedside for simply over an hour when she says she acquired a frantic name from a nurse, pleading together with her to calm him down.
After she rushed again to his room, she alleges ashen-faced employees delivered an alarming message: her father had mistakenly been given 10 occasions the prescribed dose of an antipsychotic drug.
Because the night time went on, Salvatore says she and her mom watched helplessly as her father, Benito Salvatore, went by waves of confusion, agitation and ultimately delirium. Then, lower than 12 hours after the hospital’s name, his coronary heart stopped, she says. He could not be revived.
“We have been numb. We have been utterly numb,” Angela Salvatore mentioned in an interview final week. “The loss is unquantifiable and the grief is profound.”
Now, she says she desires accountability for what occurred to her father, an Italian immigrant who got here to Canada as a younger man within the Sixties.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, the household alleges Benito Salvatore suffered extreme ache and shock, and in the end died prematurely on July 31 attributable to negligence that led to a sequence of medical errors and failures.
It alleges, amongst different issues, that nurses did not correctly affirm the prescribed dosage and medical doctors downplayed the seriousness of the alleged error, failing to acknowledge that “it was a probably deadly, life-threatening” one.
The lawsuit names as defendants Niagara Well being, which operates the St. Catharines-Ont. hospital the place Benito Salvatore was handled, in addition to 4 medical doctors and two nurses concerned in his care.
Not one of the allegations have been examined in courtroom and a press release of defence has not but been filed. Niagara Well being mentioned it couldn’t touch upon a case at present earlier than the courts.
The assertion of declare says Benito Salvatore went to the emergency room on July 23 after experiencing worsening shortness of breath, amongst different issues. He was admitted to the hospital and underwent quite a few assessments and coverings over the following week, together with for a sort of coronary heart failure and sleep apnea, it says.
On July 30, a health care provider prescribed him quetiapine, an antipsychotic treatment identified beneath the model title Seroquel, the doc says. The prescription was for 12.5 milligrams, to be taken orally as soon as a day within the night, it says.
The lawsuit alleges a number of of the nurses did not correctly learn or doc the prescription. It additional alleges a nurse did not double-check the dosage and was grossly negligent in shelling out the treatment.
That nurse then realized she had made “a grave shelling out error” and given Salvatore 125 milligrams of the drug, the assertion of declare alleges.
The medical doctors, it alleges, “all did not correctly deal with, acknowledge, examine and/or escalate Benito’s essential medical state of affairs in a well timed and emergent method.”
Salvatore, in the meantime, grew to become agitated, confused and hypoxic, a situation the place the physique’s tissues have low ranges of oxygen, the doc says. He was positioned in restraints, it says.
Salvatore was discovered with out very important indicators on July 31, and resuscitation makes an attempt have been unsuccessful, the assertion of declare says.
Angela Salvatore mentioned she and her mom have been exterior of the hospital room as medical employees tried to revive her father. “I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to him,” she mentioned.
The 2 of them “relive the trauma” of these hours every day, and the expertise has destroyed their confidence within the health-care system, she mentioned.
“This was a supreme botch job … for my lovely father,” she mentioned.
This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Oct. 26, 2024.
