Internal investigation underway at BRHC

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This article was published 01/06/2021 (1697 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Andrea Playter is looking for answers from Prairie Mountain Health after witnessing the treatment her elderly father received after he was admitted to the Brandon Regional Health Centre last summer.

Playter first brought this issue to the Sun’s attention in late 2020, revealing that her dad Ross Playter, at the age of 77, sustained some grievous injuries to his legs during his stay on the second floor of the Assiniboine Centre for a couple of weeks.

“I think his legs will probably be scarred forever, but functionally he can walk,” she said in a follow-up interview in March.

The Sun reached out to Prairie Mountain Health in April for a comment on this issue and received the following statement from a spokesperson: “PMH is aware of the concerns expressed by the family and have been in active investigation. Followup will continue directly with the family.”

The Sun also reached out to directly talk with the hospital investigators in charge of examining Ross Playter’s case, but was asked to consult with PMH’s communications department to obtain an official comment.

Playter told the Sun that this whole ordeal began on Aug. 4, 2020, when her dad suffered a stroke at their family cabin located near Ashern.

After being rushed to a nearby hospital, Playter’s dad was then transported to the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, where he stayed for nine days.

“And he was doing so well. He had no physical impairments. His only impairment was always the speech,” said Playter, who works as a speech pathologist in Minnedosa.

However, Playter said the quality of her dad’s care took a nosedive on Aug. 15 once he was transferred to the second floor of the Assiniboine Centre, where he was supposed to receive further rehabilitation services.

Instead, Playter said the physicians in charge of her father’s well-being at this time failed to properly treat the symptoms that he was experiencing in the wake of his stroke, including severe motor restlessness.

For one thing, the head doctors prescribed medication that only exacerbated Ross’ symptoms, and ensured that he couldn’t get a good night’s sleep.

“What was happening was he was very, very restless and would get up and move around and was falling in the bathroom and bruising himself up,” Playter said.

“He was prescribed all these different medications to help him sleep at night, and they had a very disastrous effect.”

Because of this, Playter said the hospital staff then decided to strap her dad into a Broda wheelchair at night and during the day to ensure that he couldn’t fall and hurt himself.

Unfortunately, Playter said this was another big miscalculation since the staff didn’t account for the fact that her dad would still be thrashing around in these restraints due to his untreated motor restlessness.

“These chairs kind of have plastic … where the calves of your legs would rest,” she explained. “And so my dad would be pushing his legs to try to get out of the chair and his legs would be pushing through the plastic and cutting (his flesh).”

While the cuts to her father’s legs were quite severe, Playter didn’t uncover these injuries until she and her mother checked him out of the BRHC on Aug. 31.

“We took him home and we unbandaged his legs and we freaked out about that,” she said.

Photos obtained by the Sun show the extent of Ross Playter’s injuries, with extensive cuts at his shins that resemble raw strips of bacon.

These photos also highlight some severe bruising and swelling that ran up and down his feet, which Playter says is the result of the bandages being wound too tight.

“My dad was a university professor and he was also a lieutenant colonel in the militia in Brandon in the armoury,” she said. “My parents have lived in Brandon for 30 to 40 years, so just to see him treated this way … I’m not over it. I don’t know if I’m going to get over it.”

While this investigation has yet to be concluded as of today, Playter is convinced that one of the main causes of her father’s misfortune is the ongoing miscommunication that’s taking place between doctors and other medical staff on the second floor of the Assiniboine Centre.

Some of the health-care professionals she has talked to about this issue even characterize this floor as a “dumping ground,” where patients are left to wallow in their injuries or illnesses without proper supervision from the doctors in charge.

“I really wish there would be some regulation put in place for the doctors that would prevent them from admitting somebody to the hospital, never seeing them for more than two weeks and not having any communication with the family,” Playter said. “And that’s exactly what happened to us.”

Of course, Playter understands that local medical staff have been under a lot of strain due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But she argues that her father should have been rehabilitated from home and didn’t need to be admitted to the BRHC at all following his hospital stay in Winnipeg.

“He would have been so much better off having come from the Health Sciences Centre straight home, just so we could skip over all that pain and suffering,” she said this past Wednesday.

While Playter still hopes that this investigation results in some accountability, she admits that she doesn’t “have a lot of faith in the whole process.”

However, she still believed it was important to speak out on this issue since she believes that this kind of medical malpractice isn’t a one-off incident at the BRHC.

“I guess my final point is if this happened to my dad, what hellish treatment are other old people receiving who don’t have a younger relative close by to advocate for them?” she wrote in a text message on Friday morning.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson