Achi news desk-
A Montreal family has filed a $1 million lawsuit against Lakeshore Hospital after their 86-year-old mother fell to the floor and died in the hospital apparently unnoticed.
Candida McCarrin died on February 26, 2021, not long after being admitted to the hospital with respiratory problems. Her children accepted the explanation that she died of heart failure.
But a CBC News report found that Makrin actually collapsed at her bedside, and wasn’t found by staff until much later.
“I can’t imagine how my mother must have felt to have eight children, but no one was able to be there during her untimely death. I can’t imagine the pain she was in that night when she fell to the floor,” McCarrin’s daughter, Gilda McCarrin, said.
Despite repeated appeals for information, the family says they have not yet been informed of the circumstances of the woman’s death. They say they can’t even get the names of the nurses and doctors on staff that day.
“We tried to contact them and nothing. They blocked us. None of the staff or the management reached us,” said the son of the deceased, Emmanuel Makarin.
After three years of going around in circles looking for answers, the family hired a lawyer to open the civil suit. They feel this is the only way they will receive accountability and answers.
The lawyer Aimer Miskelauer claims that the hospital was negligent in providing treatment, and adds that it did not disclose important information to the family. Three years after the woman’s death, the family says they still can’t move on because they can’t get answers.
“I want to scream. I want to scream because I can’t take it,” Gilda said.
Late Thursday afternoon, the regional health board said it would not comment on specifics because of the litigation, but said a number of improvements had been made since the tragedy to provide better supervision of new staff and monitor patients every 15 minutes.
