This incident occured this weekend.
My spouse suffers from a bi-polar disorder and occasionaly suffers from manic- depressive bouts in which she ends up cutting her wrists. It took me years to convince her to finally see a therapist and psyciatrist on an out-patient basis - which I'm not sure is really helping. Other than that, I've never reported these incidents in the hopes that somehow she would get better; because of her objections; and, also because of reservations of the help she would obtain from placing her in the care of a psyciatric facility.
However, she had an episode on Friday 5/30/08 where she cut her wrists and I finally believe I did the correct thing by calling 911 in order to force her to get help. They took her to the KINO UPH facility and the police officers suggested that I go and petition for her stay so that they could keep an eye on her to make sure she would not further injure herself. I filled out the necessary paperwork explaining why I felt she should be kept there and was told to call back the next morning and speak with an assigned caseworker who would give me further details of when she was to be released.
I called the next morning ( yesterday, Saturday 5/31/08 ) and was told the caseworker was not there and that they were not authorized to give me any other information. I asked if I could speak to my wife and they said no. The only contact I could have now is if she called me. However, they would notify her of my call. She later called and stated that she had been assaulted while she was sleeping.
I later spoke to a Dr Rose who advised me that they did not believe she posed any serious threat of suicide or harm to herself and that they planned to release her around 3pm.
I arrived at the hospital to find that what my wife had told me was true. Her left eye was almost swollen shut and black and blue. The right side of her face was swollen and red. She also had bruises above her left breast. She called the police and filed an assault charge. We waited almost 2 hours for them to show up and take the report. They also took pictures which we had already done with a camera-phone.
I find it apalling that I finally found the courage to make a call and trust that she would be provided not only with the medical and psyciatric care she needed, but that I could also find relief in knowing that I had done the right thing by placing her in an environment where she would be under highly supervised care and observation to prevent her from hurting herself further - only to find that I really ended up placing her in danger where other patients were allowed to assault her.
Obviously quality care is only a buzz word of their mission statement. Also it is evident that so-called highly supervised observation to ensure that patients pose no danger to themselves or others is not truly in practice. I realize the other person who the assault charges were filed against was also a patient who most probably was there because of a mental disorder or drug problem that may have caused her to act out in violence.
However, the question is: Doesn't the facility have a legal responsibility of living up to it's mission statement of providing quality care and upholding it's so-called mandate of observing these patient's for the purpose of preventing self-harm or harm to others? Based on this particulat incident, can legal action be taken against the hospital?
This experience only serves to enforce my previous hesitation of calling for help when my spouse suffers from a bi-polar anxiety attack. With help like this, we probably stand a better and safer chance of coping with a fix on our own. Please advise. Thank you. jfl1956@yahoo
