I was one of a million people who was recently outraged by the horrifying, tragic story of a young Las Vegas woman named Roshunda Abney who was ignored–ignored!–by emergency room staff for six hours until she went home and gave birth to a premature baby who then died. Imagine that! The hospital ignored the moans of a pregnant woman in agony, for hours. They must have been playing poker or something back there that whole time. Surely, there is incompetence or racism or something equally nefarious going on here.
There’s just one problem. It turns out there’s something pretty important that most media reports have left out of this story. The hospital didn’t know the woman was pregnant. For that matter…neither did she.
That’s right. She was six months pregnant and thought she was just having stomach pains. Somehow, the reports of this story that made national news, especially the official Associated Press version, completely left out this little detail.
Now, I can’t imagine how a woman could possibly not know that she was pregnant for six months–it would seem that some major physical signs would have had to be present–but it goes without saying then that she had gotten no prenatal care. Still, I have to wonder what her lifestyle was like during that time that killed her baby. I’d love to know if she was smoking, drinking, or doing anything else unhealthy during that time.
In their rush to run yet another story that makes some big, bad, scary institution look evil, the media has really dropped the ball on this one. Unfortunately, the lion’s share of responsibility for this poor baby’s death probably has to fall on the mother who wasn’t even good enough to know that she was a mother. I may be wrong, but one thing’s for certain: the media has largely given us an unbalanced story, and too many people are hurrying to condemn the hospital.
Read the AP version of this story here. A local story that briefly mentions that the woman didn’t know she was pregnant is here.
Gently Hew Stone 
I have a very good friend who did not know she was pregnant for six months. She had medical conditions which, she was told, would make it impossible for her to get pregnant. She and her husband had just given up. Then she went in the hospital for complications of her condition and found out she was pregnant.
She did not have prenatal care for those six months. She was on some pretty strong drugs for various things. But her baby was born fine at nine months.
Sometimes babies try to show up too early for no good reason. If you know you’re pregnant, the hospital can help stop that. My youngest tried to show up eleven weeks early. I stayed in the hospital for the last four weeks before he was born.
Suzi, you’re right, of course, and you’re not the first person I’ve heard this from. Perhaps my tone here was too harsh. Yes, it’s possible that this was just one of those rare flukes where a decent woman legitmately couldn’t have had any idea that she was pregnant, and then she gave birth to a premature baby who died despite her being a healthy, responsible person.
But really, is it more likely that that was the case, or that she just didn’t take very good care of herself and now she’s trying to blame the hospital that couldn’t reasonably have been expected to undo months–or years–of poor living in one day? I can’t judge her, but if I had to choose which option is more likely, it’s obviously got to be the latter.
But the worst thing here–and I hope this came across in my original post–isn’t even this woman. It’s the media that has reported yet another warped, biased, “poor victim is automatically holy and the big bad man is evil” story. Such blatant disregard for objectivity upsets me. I may be wrong in my suggestion that the tragedy is ultimately her fault, but the national media is absolutely wrong for painting her as a saint.
Huston, you are absolutely correct to question the media’s reporting of this issue. What everyone seems to want to do is assume that the baby’s cause of death is attributable to the hospital. But what if the mother actually caused her baby’s death? Does this incident seem so egregious if the mother is to blame?
Just so you know, some people who know the mother have spoken up and said that this woman was a regular smoker and drug user during the pregnancy. I suppose that some of the truth will come out during the litigation.
The really twisted thing is that in order to make the loss seem greater, her attorney is now claiming that the couple had been trying to get pregnant. The attorney is so loony that he doesn’t even realize how stupid that makes his client look. She didn’t realize she was over 6 months pregnant even though she was trying? Give me a break!
Jeff, no kidding. Every now and then, less than honorable people come out of the woodwork to make a quick buck from some random organization (I’m thinking here largely of the whole Wendy’s “chili finger” fiasco, which anyone with half a brain knew was a scam from day one). Obviously, this one is no scam, and it’s tragic and sad, but is it the hospital’s fault? Is she an innocent victim? For all I know, maybe, but from all the evidence I’m aware of, it sure doesn’t seem likely. Past experience suggests that she’s unfortunately reaping what she’d (perhaps unwittingly) sown.
Still, the knee jerk, bandwagon campaign against the hospital is pathetic. I can’t imagine them being criminally negligent here.
Huston, I just have to say that it’s probably a good thing that I will never have to rely on you for health care. I’m assuming that you’re probably a man, since you state ‘how could a woman not know she’s pregnant’. It is ignorance like this that fuels society to continue to pass blame on others. The hospital’s job is to take care of their patients. Whether or not the baby was already dead should not be the issue here. This woman sat for 6 hours in severe pain in the waiting room with no help. She was in pain and went to the hospital for help. They did not help her. What kind of society are we becoming if we cannot expect medical attention from a place that provides medical attention? I find your comments rude and extremelty harsh!
I would hope that you never find yourself in a hospital with a similar situation. Should we no longer care about people who have heart attacks because they eat greasy food? Should we no longer care about people with allergies because they choose to go outdoors? Should we no longer care about someone who’s suffering a spinal cord injury because they chose to drive a car? Or any of that. Who are we to tell others how to live their lives and whether or not they should receive medical care for their ailments? I guess we should all stay indoors, eat healthy pills for food, and wrap ourselves up in bubblewrap since this is what we can expect from our health care system.
Hi, Becca. Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog. First of all, you talk about passing blame and being harsh, but I only laid out the facts and pointed out the obvious conclusion that, in reality, it’s far more likely that this woman committed the fatal errors here, not the hospital. I have admitted all along that, not being omniscient, I might be wrong. You, on the other hand, have tried, sentenced, and executed the hospital yourself. You see no nuance here, no context, no shades of gray, and no background at all is offered. All this while getting the facts of the case wrong.
Your only real accusation here is that the hospital “did not help her.” I explored that in my original post–what do you think the staff were all doing, playing cards back there and laughing as they ignored her? Emergency rooms are crowded, chock full 24/7 of people in desperate pain, Becca. Could someone really be in pain and still have to wait while people in even worse situations are helped for hours at a time? Yes. It happens constantly. Before you pass judgment on those “cold, heartless” hospitals, why don’t you consider that instead of them being staffed top to bottom with systematcially incompetent monsters, maybe, just maybe…they did their job to the best of their ability, but it was one woman’s ignorance that caused this poor tragedy to happen. Think about it.
Huston, you ask ‘could SOMEONE really be in pain and still have to wait….’ You’re only talking about one person here. I live in a smaller community where the ER has maybe 6 beds, maybe a few more. We’re talking about an ER in Las Vegas. I’m assuming (yes, ass-u-ming) that they have more beds. You’re asking me to conclude that in 6 hours there wasn’t a bed for her in the back room? I’m not, by any means, saying these people were playing poker. I am saying that the person who decides what patient is next decided they were going to let her be seen when THEY decided to.
I’d like you to read more than just one article on this news story. I’ve read a few of them. Some of them state she gave birth to a dead baby. Some state that the paramedics reported a few respirations. But, many of them report the rudeness and cruelty of the nursing assistant at the front desk. This man, who has now been suspended, told other patients in the waiting room that he was going to make it so they couldn’t see a doctor if they didn’t stop requesting Roshunda to go ahead of them. Her fiance/boyfriend had security called on him for asking if she could see the doctor soon. The person behind the front desk was, in my opinion, having a power trip over the whole situation. Maybe he was having a bad day, we are all human. But, when you work in the medical field, you have to put your personal life asside to help others. If your significant other went into the hospital in the same situation, I am sure you would look at this completely differently. You think about this. Your wife/girlfriend is in severe pain so you take her to the ER. She’s had ‘woman problems’ in the past, so no one suspects pregnancy. After 6 hours and one of the nursing staff mentioning it sounds like gallstones, I’m sure you’re going to leave also. It pretty much seems hopeless. I’m sure you’d suggest she take some OTC painkillers and call it a night. Maybe by morning the stone will pass and everything will be ok. Imagine shortly after that you hear her screams from the bathroom, with a baby being delivered breeched. Imagine what it would be like, really! There’s a baby you had no idea that wants out but its stuck. Imagine what her fiance/boyfriend was thinking. How horrifying that must’ve been for them. And, after the whole ordeal, I’m sure you would be thinking “THAT **** HOSPITAL!”, just like I would. This hospital failed her in providing her with medical assistance, CLEARLY.
For clarification, I’m a nursing student. We’re taught about the importance of triage. We are also taught the basics of protocol. In most hospitals, when a woman of child-bearing age comes in with abdominal pain, she is automatically given a pregnancy test. Why wasn’t this done for her? I’m sure in 6 hours she had to go to the bathroom at some point.
I find comments that accuse others of being harsh, if they should have the audacity to analyze the situation and ask questions, to be quite arrogant and condescending. People think that they “know” everything simply because they “feel”, and they conclude that others who don’t “feel” the same must be heartless. If these same people would only educate themselves before formulating their opinions, they might reach a completely different conclusion.
First, you have only heard one side of the story. Since the hospital is doing what it should, it is not commenting publicly due to the litigation. If all you hear is one side of the story, and if you assume that what you hear is true (dangerous assumption), then you should not be surprised that you have already convicted the hospital.
Second, if you even have a clue about how Emergency Rooms operate in hospitals across our great nation, then you would know that the primary issues here are (1) patient load versus patient capacity and (2) proper triage. Neither issue was explored by the articles surrounding Ms. Abney.
The bottom line is that people wait in pain every day of every week for six hours or more in ERs around the country. If there is not sufficient bed space as compare to patient load, and if the individual is not triaged as “urgent”, then the individual will have to wait until the more urgent matters have been stabilized.
Applying the “facts” of this matter to the issues, it is unknown whether there were more urgent matters ahead of Abney. If there were five doctors in the ER, and all five were busy with more urgent matters (i.e., heart issues, strokes, etc.), then Abney would have to wait. If there were insufficient beds, or in other words, the beds were already occupied by people who were triaged at a similar level, then Abney would have to wait. Since only Abney’s version of the story is being aired, you will have to wait for the facts to emerge before making a judgment.
Similarly, you will need to wait for more facts about the triage. The reality is that patients who are poor “historians” (a term used by the medical field and not of my own making) are more likely to end up with poor results. The reason should be obvious: a poor historian will leave hospital staff in a position of having to guess more often than an accurate historian. If Ms. Abney was a poor historian, then this could have affected the accuracy of the triage.
It should be very telling to most people that Abney filed suit and accused the hospital of manslaughter before there is even a finding of the cause of death by the coroner. A prudent person, one who is honest and virtuous, would want to only assert matters that are factually verified. These people are clearly making accusations that the facts do not yet support. Why, then, would good, honest and virtuous people make such reckless accusations?
Please follow this story, as I am certain that the answer to the question that I just posed will come out in due time.
Becca, please provide links to your sources for all those stories about the heinously evil assistant at the front desk. I’d love to see the credibility of the “witnesses” who say he was running the ER like Nurse Ratched. Like so many others in the media, you’re bending over backwards to identify with the pregnant woman here. Why not extend that same benefit of the doubt to the hospital, the experienced professionals who not only dedicate their lives to rescuing as many of the desperately hurt and sick as they can, but who also risk putting themselves on the public chopping block if something ever goes wrong? This is a case in point.
If you’ve read as many stories about this event as you claim, you’d know that the triage DID try to ascertain if she was pregnant, but she couldn’t provide a urine sample.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything Jeff says. In fact, he makes the objective case here far more clearly than I have. Thanks, Jeff!
I haven’t read any reports that she is filing a lawsuit charing manslaughter. I would like a link to follow that up. I have read that she is suing for negligence, which is exactly what happened here.
As for links to the stories of witness accounts, they are as follows:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/hours-of-cramps-aches-go-untreated-at-two-hospitals-for-area-woman-78628332.html
“He asked me how long I had been in pain, and I told him two days,” Abney said. “He told me that since I had been in pain that long, another 45 minutes wouldn’t make any difference.”
While at the UMC emergency room, Abney said she had her fiancé get her a cup to urinate in. She said she hoped the specimen would help doctors find out what was wrong with her.
After she urinated, she gave the bloody specimen to the nursing assistant at the front desk.
As the evening wore on, a woman who was sitting near Abney in the crowded waiting room became increasingly concerned.
“This woman who I didn’t know kept moaning, ‘Oh, Jesus, please help me,”’ Victoria Taylor recalled Thursday from her Las Vegas home. “It gave me chills. She (Abney) would rock back and forth. ‘Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.’ It got louder and louder. It got the whole waiting room real nervous. Three or four of us went up to the desk to tell this CNA who was running the waiting room to help her. We said everybody would let her go first. When I told the CNA to do something. He said I should close my mouth and stay out of other people’s business, or I’d never get to see a doctor.”
Taylor, a 48-year-old thyroid cancer patient who was waiting to get medicine for her condition, was stunned by what she described as the nursing assistant’s “coldness.”
“I’m Jewish,” she said, weeping. “And all I could think of was this is the kind of coldness they had in concentration camps. I’ve read so much about the torture when people were sick. The Nazis wouldn’t do anything.”
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/dec/23/woman-sues-umc-over-babys-death/
The lawsuit alleges UMC and Valley violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act and inflicted emotional distress on Abney and Dewberry.
http://www.ktnv.com/global/story.asp?s=11660101
Several witnesses have reportedly given similar accounts of this woman being denied medical care at UMC back on November 30th.
And, in case you need more to go off of, here’s a copy of the lawsuit http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/abney_complaint.pdf I don’t see any charges of manslaughter on that.
What happened to this couple was completely inhumane! I’m suprised to see that I’m one of the very few who doesn’t agree with you on your blog. I would like to think that in a busy ER, people would get re-triaged to see if their symptoms have gotten more serious, but it appears after her initial conversation, no one bothered to check her again. No one bothered to communicate to this couple that a doctor would be with them shortly, or what have you. No one cared to provide any amount of comfort to this woman in excruciating pain. Now, I understand that you or Jeff would have any idea what it feels like to give birth, but just imagine the worst pain you’ve ever felt, and to sit in a hospital waiting room with no amount of communication between you and the staff, just the cold shoulder.
Granted, if they would’ve stayed there for another hour or so, the baby would’ve been born in the waiting room and medical assistance could’ve been given then. But, I completely understand why they left. They were given the impression she was having gallstones, therefore it wasn’t a medical emergency in their eyes.
Becca, you say that nobody “bothered” or “cared,” but how do you know? You’ve only heard one side of the story, and you only cite one objective witness, from the first article. That same article, which is the only one you linked to that has any substantive content and bearing on this discussion, also notes that she was unable to give a urine sample for the pregnancy test. The hospital did not know that she was pregnant and, as I and others have made the point here already, it just seems far more likely that this was a terrible accident due to this woman’s ignorance of her condition than it is that there is rampant cruelty running through the halls of these hospitals. You say you’re a nursing student–do you really think that so many of your colleagues are horrible, horrible human beings?