Mom says she ‘lost trust’ after ER incident

A Brandon mother says she is “heartbroken” after hospital ER staff allegedly failed to properly monitor her 11-month-old daughter who had difficulty breathing over the holidays.

Katlin Taylor said her daughter Brooklyn, who is now one year old, tested positive for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) when she was assessed by a doctor in the ER at the Brandon Regional Health Centre on Dec. 23.

Taylor said she waited less than an hour in the ER before her and Brooklyn were taken to an isolation room. She was given a puffer and was told to return to the ER if her baby’s symptoms worsened, and five days later they had.

She returned to the ER with Brooklyn at 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 28.

Taylor, who is an Indigenous woman originally from Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, said she “lost trust” in the Brandon ER staff when they closely monitored another child every 30 minutes who seemed to have a sprained ankle and did not check up on her baby once in the three hours they sat in the waiting room.

“They made us feel like we were not important,” Taylor said.

When she asked nurses at the triage desk why they had walked by her baby multiple times without checking on her condition, staff told her they were monitoring her daughter from the desk, Taylor said.

“How can you do that with a baby who’s having breathing difficulties?” she said, adding that she asked the nurses whether their lack of proper monitoring had to do with her child’s race.

Taylor voiced her concerns with the charge nurse on shift and a supervisor, who eventually ushered her family into a private room to wait for a doctor assessment. A couple hours later, Taylor said she spoke to a nurse again about how she felt staff weren’t taking her daughter’s health seriously.

Then health-care staff asked them to leave, she said.

“The one nurse full on opened the door for me and my daughter and my brother to walk out of the emergency room,” Taylor said.

“I was in complete and utter shock.”

At one point, Taylor said she was cornered by the charge nurse, supervisor and two security guards. She told them she didn’t appreciate how she was made to look like a bad person for advocating for her daughter, especially in front of an ER packed with people.

Taylor said health-care staff suggested Brooklyn could stay in the ER to receive medical treatment, but she would have to leave. This triggered Taylor, as she is the first generation in her family who didn’t attend residential schools and she didn’t feel comfortable leaving her child behind, she said.

“You could only imagine how I felt hearing that,” she said.

Taylor made a verbal complaint about the incident to Prairie Mountain Health and reported it to the Brandon Police Service.

A BPS spokesperson confirmed they received a call from the mother along with a complaint from the hospital regarding allegations of mischief. Police went to the ER and investigated what happened.

No charges are being laid against either party, the BPS spokesperson said.

When asked whether police have received complaints from the public about being mistreated by health-care staff, BPS Chief Tyler Bates said in a statement that police respond to a variety of calls, including concerns raised about interactions in health-care facilities.

Police take all calls and public concerns seriously and respond in accordance with their procedures, Bates said.

A spokesperson for Prairie Mountain Health said in a statement that the regional health authority has been in direct contact with Taylor, but they could not provide a comment on the incident due to patient confidentiality.

“PMH does take concerns very seriously. We have a dedicated patient relations department that follows up on care concerns,” the statement said.

A PMH memorandum sent to health-care staff on Dec. 19 that was obtained by The Brandon Sun shows the Brandon ER had more than one doctor working when Taylor and her baby were in the waiting room.

After Taylor left the ER with her baby around 11 p.m. on Dec. 28, she called Health Links, a 24-7 online health-care service, for medical advice on how to manage her daughter’s worsening symptoms, she said. The next day, she booked an appointment with her family doctor.

Taylor said she was contacted by an Indigenous health patient advocate who works at the hospital to support patients and families. The advocate told her she can be on site to guide Taylor through the health-care system in the future.

A couple days later, an ER manager phoned her to apologize, she said.

“He had confirmed with me that, in fact, (Brooklyn) had been treated wrongly and that … she should have been monitored hourly,” Taylor said.

She believes racism in the health-care system played a role in the incident.

“I’m hurt my daughter experienced that,” she said.

“I don’t think that this should happen to another Indigenous baby at all.”

Taylor said she wants nurses and doctors to be more aware of the ways intergenerational trauma impacts Indigenous people and how navigating the health-care system can be challenging.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com