Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

WARWICK, R.I. --- The nurse in charge of coordinating the nursing staff at Kent Hospital the evening Michael J. Woods died there testified in Kent County Superior Court Monday afternoon that she was unaware of Woods' condition as he lay on a gurney parked in a hallway near her work station, until Woods was stricken with a fatal heart attack that killed him.

Testifying in the Woods' family's negligence suit against the hospital, Vicki Noon said she was working as the charge nurse in the Kent Hospital emergency room the evening Woods came in complaining of a sore throat and vomiting.

After undergoing heart tests and x-rays, Woods --- brother of actor James Woods and a former Warwick mayoral candidate --- had been parked in a hallway because all of the treatment rooms were full. It was in that hallway, near the nurses' station, that he suffered what turned out to be a fatal heart attack.

Noon, who said that her job was like being the air-traffic controller of the emergency room, said though she was in charge of supervising the nurses, it was not her job to know every detail of every case they were handling.

She said the decision on which room to put Woods in, or to leave him in the hallway, was up to the nurse on the case. The doctor treating Woods, Kelli A. Naylor, has previously testified that she ordered Woods be put on a heart monitor. He was not.

Expert witnesses hired by the Woods family have testified that the failure to get Woods on a cardiac monitor was significant; that had he been on one, staff could have had enough warning that they most likely would have been able to resuscitate Woods after his 7:10 p.m. attack.

Mark B. Decof, the lawyer representing the Woods estate, pressed Noon on why she hadn't looked over Woods to see if his case required he displace a patient in one of the rooms with the cardiac monitor.

"I have to rely on the nurses to bring me up to date," she said.

As charge nurse, she said she watched over the overall flow of work. Specific decisions about specific cases were usually resolved by doctors and the nurses assigned to the patients.

"If a doctor tells a nurse [to do something like get a cardiac monitor for a patient] she will often take care of it herself," Noon said, adding she would often be informed after the order was completed.

Noon was scheduled to resume testifying Tuesday morning.

 Tags  heart attack James Woods kent hospital

Comments

RNP said:

If a RN cannot follow a dr.'s order I believe it is protocol to tell the doctor the problem and then to report to Nurse in charge to help resolve the problems asap. If you can't or won't follow a dr's order- you must document that in the record and why and inform the dr.
Again, appears no accountability by nursing staff in this facility. No patient advocacy either. I would say that all nursing personnel involved are also to blame here as well as dr.
But, I'm not on the jury-----

Link | November 23, 2009 7:08 PM
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sophia said:

this whole case is unbelievable. the more "kent" speaks, the more they dig themselves a deeper hole.

Link | November 25, 2009 10:00 AM
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