Dr. Marietta Van Den Berg says Surrey Memorial Hospital is working hard to ensure a so-called “Never Event” at the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit never happens again after a woman stands accused of sneaking into the neonatal intensive care unit, taking her shirt off and holding three babies against her skin.
“There was a good system in place but every now and again you have to remind people – and I’m not saying that anybody did anything wrong, I’m just saying this occurred and it shouldn’t have so we have to go back and what we do, what should we do and how can we keep our most vulnerable people safe.”
Van Den Berg, a psychiatric and site medical director at SMH, says the hospital holds “comprehensive root-cause analysis quality reviews on everything that goes wrong, and this one is still to be done.”
The Surrey Police Service issued a public bulletin on November 28 seeking the public’s help in identifying an assault suspect after a woman entered the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Surrey Memorial Hospital, removed her shirt and allegedly made “skin to skin” contact with three babies there.
Soon after that a suspect was arrested and charged with three counts of assault. She was expected to appear before a judge for a bail hearing on Monday, with a publication ban imposed on evidence presented at that hearing.
“My understanding is this person slipped in behind a group of people,” Van Den Berg told the Now-Leader. “Typically people are asked to identify themselves heading into the unit and parents are supposed to wear a wrist ban but often take it off because they get discharged before the baby does. “But they do have to identify themselves and the name of their baby and what room they’re in, and if they are grandparents, or aunties and uncles they have to have consent from the parents before they are allowed in and obviously in this case the screening didn’t occur and I don’t think anybody knew that it didn’t occur, right, like because she sneaked in behind some other people and was actually in a baby room before anybody noticed, really.”
Sergeant Tige Pollock said in his press release this is alleged to have happened at 6:55 a.m. on October 28 and police were notified at 1 p.m.
“None of the infants were injured as a result of the interaction. Hospital security officers were notified and removed the female from the property,” he said.
Meantime, a woman by the same name was accused of stabbing a dog and found guilty in 2016 of “causing an animal to continue to be in distressed. Van Den Berg said she didn’t know that.
“I mean, we’re so grateful no one was hurt in the event. Even though it’s a “Never Event” it could have been worse, everything can always be worse, I suppose,” she said. “Let me tell you I would have had more sleepless nights if I had known that. But no one was harmed, and the nursing staff kind-of from the beginning were watching her.”
She said the woman slipped in, was in a room, and this was during a nursing shift change. “And so of course it was initially assumed that she was screened and she had the right to be there, and then they noticed that her behaviour isn’t quite normal and so they were definitely monitoring her and trying to figure out what is going on here, and should she be here.”
“We call this a “Never Event” because of course we don’t want it to ever happen – it’s one of those events that we just, like, it’s unthinkable,” Van Den Berg said. “We have a few quality events that we regard as ‘should never happen.’ It’s not because they never happen, it’s because we don’t think they should ever happen, so it’s highly unusual. That’s why there hasn’t been anything like this in the news before.”
She said this incident is a one-off, as far as she knows.
“We’ve taken action in the meantime – we can’t wait for a quality review to take action and so security has reminded staff once again how they can reach out more quickly, the screening protocols have been re-iterated with all staff, people have been reminded you can’t let someone come in with you; they have to wait outside, you enter, they have to be screened and verified. We tightened up all those screening protocols because we also have a child unit and a family birthing unit and so there are vulnerable babies in those places too.”
As for the SPS saying the incident was reported to them six hours after the fact, Van Den Berg replied that “first of all, that is inaccurate and secondly, we go through the whole timeline with a fine-toothed comb. I can’t tell you the exact timelines because I need to verify them through the quality review but I can tell you it was absolutely not six hours.”
She said once the nurses realized what was going on they pushed the alarm button which brought security, and the security called the police. “They had escorted the person off the property and called the police, so it was not six hours,” she insisted.
She expects the review will be happening next week. “If there was a delay, we will find out and we will do something about it.”
Van Den Berg said the babies’ parents were immediately told about what happened. “We just talked them through what happened and reassured them and two were completely OK because their babies were fine – I mean all the babies were fine but one group of parents were quite unhappy, and understandably so. I mean, they leave the ICU, they don’t stay there 24/7, and they expect the staff to keep their children safe so I understand that they were upset.”
Van Den Berg confirmed nothing perverse happened to the children. “No, no, no, no, no – she just picked up the child, held the child against her chest and the baby wasn’t harmed at all.” By the time the woman went into the other two rooms, she said, at this point hospital staff were watching her “and going ‘you can’t be doing that.’”