Kemerovo woman demands ambulance crew be held accountable

A resident of Kemerovo is trying to hold an ambulance crew accountable for leaving her grandmother with gastrointestinal bleeding at home to await death. She spoke about the family tragedy to an NGS42.RU correspondent on Saturday, January 31.

The 73-year-old woman suffered a stroke last summer. Since then, she has been paralyzed and is entirely dependent on her daughter«s care. Two days ago, early in the morning, the pensioner»s condition deteriorated sharply: weakness, drowsiness, confusion. At the same time, she had black, liquid stool, indicating internal bleeding.

The daughter immediately called an ambulance; crew No. 11 examined the patient, measured her blood pressure—which relatives say was very low—and performed an ECG. The doctors were also informed about suspicions of bleeding, but the physician said the stool was completely normal and her condition was due to previous strokes.

«There is no threat to life at the moment, hospitalization is not necessary,» relatives relay the medics« words. The patient was prescribed Smecta and activated charcoal to take.

The confused daughter signed the papers handed to her without looking, and this turned out to be a fatal mistake.

«The doctor did not inform her at all, even though she is required to inform the patient»s legal representative. Mom just scribbled in two places, and it later turned out that the second signature was for refusal of hospitalization. But they never even offered it to her,« says Alexandra, the patient»s granddaughter.

After the medics left, the patient«s condition only worsened. A few hours later, they called an ambulance again; different doctors arrived and urgently rushed to the surgery department of Podgorbunsky Hospital.

When the surgeon came out to the admission department, he immediately began to severely scold the relatives of the admitted patient. The gastrointestinal bleeding had lasted 12 hours; now the patient is in intensive care in extremely critical condition. Why didn«t they come earlier when everything could still have been corrected…

Now the grandmother remains on a ventilator; the bleeding has been stopped, but doctors give bleak prognoses and advise the family to prepare for a soon farewell.

«It is very painful for me to talk about all this because I myself worked for the ambulance service in Kemerovo for a long time. I saw all the hell that goes on there, what negligent doctors there are, how they leave patients like my grandmother at home. I simply will not let this situation go unpunished, not even because my loved one suffered. This is not acceptable,» Alexandra says with tears.

She has already filed complaints with the Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor«s Office, the Ministry of Health, Social Protection, and the Human Rights Ombudsman. The ambulance service, in turn, promises to conduct an internal investigation.

«I am afraid that they will simply rewrite the call record. There is a refusal of hospitalization, they will rewrite the record, and they»ll be off the hook.

As a medical professional, Alexandra believes that it is simply impossible to miss the symptoms of gastrointestinal bleeding. She also blames the system itself and the ambulance logistics in the city for such situations.

«My former colleagues say that now the cardiology team, the resuscitation team, and the psychiatric team are all in a common queue. A call comes in, for example, like for my grandmother, meaning a resuscitation call. And cardiologists, who cannot intubate or place a central venous access, might go to it.»

At the same time, according to the Kemerovo woman, a resuscitation specialist might be sent to the address of a stable patient who only needs to be transported to the hospital.

Previously, we reported how a woman in a coma could not be taken to a hospital for 15 hours because the ambulance got stuck in a snowdrift.