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DYING WOMAN IGNORED AT BROOKLYN HOSPTIAL: Officials promise reforms after surveillance footage captures tragedy.
*New York City hospital officials say reforms are in store at a Brooklyn psychiatric ward where a woman collapsed from her chair, fell to the floor and lay dying as workers watched for an hour without helping.
Esmin Green, 49, was involuntarily committed to Kings County Hospital on June 18 to be treated for agitation and psychosis. Surveillance footage showed she had been waiting in the ER nearly 24 hours for a bed when she fell from her seat at 5:32 a.m. on June 19 and ended up face down on the floor.
Green stopped moving about a half hour after she collapsed. She was dead by 6:35, when someone on the medical staff, alerted by a person in the waiting room, finally approached, nudged Green with her foot and gently prodded her shoulder, as if to wake her. The staffer left and returned with someone wearing a white lab coat who examined her and called for assistance.
Between her initial collapse and the staffer's reaction more than an hour later, Green's distress was repeatedly ignored – by other patients waiting a few feet away, by security guards and by several hospital staff members who appeared to notice her prone body at least three times but made no visible attempt to see whether she needed help. Watch a news report of the surveillance video
One guard couldn't even be bothered to leave his seat, rolling it around a corner to look at Green's body, then rolling away a few moments later.
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the hospital, said six people have been fired as a result of the incident, including security personnel and members of the medical staff, reports the Associated Press.
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