Sascha Wil­son

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has to pay $1.27 mil­lion in dam­ages to a reg­is­tered nurse who suf­fered a mis­car­riage and a back in­jury af­ter falling off a de­fec­tive chair al­most six years ago. The au­thor­i­ty al­so has to pay the woman’s le­gal costs.

The woman, now 35, had sued the NCRHA for neg­li­gence, per­son­al in­juries and breach of care, con­tract and statu­to­ry du­ty aris­ing from the Oc­to­ber 29, 2014 fall and an­oth­er in­ci­dent two years lat­er. She con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence back pain, has to un­der­go surgery, and was di­ag­nosed with 40 per cent per­ma­nent par­tial dis­abil­i­ty. At­tor­neys Im­ran Khan and Saa­ji­da Nar­ine rep­re­sent­ed her in the mat­ter.

In the 49-page judg­ment, Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed said, “An em­ploy­er owes a du­ty of care to pro­vide a safe place of work to its em­ploy­ees.”

The nurse, then 29, was on du­ty at the Adult Sur­gi­cal Ward at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex when she went to the nurse’s sta­tion to write up her notes. How­ev­er, as she sat on a chair one of the legs broke, caus­ing the then eight-week preg­nant nurse to fall for­ward, hit­ting her ab­domen on the desk and then falling flat on the floor in an up­right po­si­tion. The chair then struck her on her back. She be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ab­dom­i­nal and back pains. Tests were done, in­clud­ing two ul­tra­sounds, but no foetal heart rate was de­tect­ed. No x-ray was done be­cause she was in her first trimester. She was put on bed rest and giv­en a fol­low-up ul­tra­sound ap­point­ment in two weeks. How­ev­er, on the morn­ing of the ap­point­ment, she be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ab­dom­i­nal pains and spot­ting.

A week af­ter she had a mis­car­riage. She re­turned to work a month lat­er but had to take emer­gency sick leave as she was still ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ef­fects from the fall. From No­vem­ber 23, 2014, to Au­gust/Sep­tem­ber 2015 she pro­ceed­ed on var­i­ous pe­ri­ods of sick leave, dur­ing which time she was as­signed to the Oph­thal­mol­o­gy Ward to per­form light du­ties. How­ev­er, the nurse said sev­er­al times she had to per­form tasks that in­volved pulling, push­ing, lift­ing, or bathing pa­tients, in­clud­ing those who were obese, which put an in­creased strain on her back.

Re­call­ing the events lead­ing up to the sec­ond in­ci­dent which ex­ac­er­bat­ed her in­jury, she said on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2016, she re­quest­ed as­sis­tance on the ward as she was the on­ly reg­is­tered nurse on du­ty with two nurs­ing stu­dents, but she re­ceived no help. She said a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive (CSR) told her to at­tend to a pa­tient who was ad­mit­ted that week­end but had re­ceived no bath. The nurse ex­plained to the CSR that she did not have help to bathe the pa­tient and could not lift, push, or pull heavy ob­jects due to an in­jury. How­ev­er, she was told it was about pa­tient care and in­struct­ed to at­tend to the se­vere­ly obese pa­tient who was on oxy­gen, con­nect­ed to in­tra­venous flu­ids and oth­er in­tra­venous in­fu­sions and could not even lift her leg.

De­scrib­ing the pa­tient’s con­di­tion as de­plorable, she said her pam­per was full of urine and fae­ces. The nurse said it was the first time she ever had to gag her mouth. With help from the nurs­ing stu­dents, she tried to roll the pa­tient to the side of the bed to take off the pa­tients pam­pers but she felt her back snap. The nurse said she was un­able to move for a while but even­tu­al­ly helped the nurs­ing stu­dents clean the pa­tient as best as she could. How­ev­er, through­out the re­main­der of her shift, she ex­pe­ri­enced hor­ri­ble back pains. From Oc­to­ber 16, 2016, she went on an­oth­er pe­ri­od of sick leave and to date, she has not re­turned to work.

In to­tal, the nurse took 821 days of in­jury leave. Al­though still em­ployed at the au­thor­i­ty, she stopped re­ceiv­ing a salary since Sep­tem­ber 2017. She had an­oth­er child on April 2, 2018, but due to the in­jury her preg­nan­cy was dif­fi­cult and she was un­able to have a nat­ur­al child­birth.

In award­ing dam­ages, the judge at­tached sig­nif­i­cant weight on the im­pact the in­jury had on her abil­i­ty to do cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties and care for and in­ter­act with her young son. The judge said it was al­so high­ly prob­a­ble that she missed out on op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­prove her skills for pro­mo­tion and se­nior­i­ty hav­ing been away from work for five and a half years. The judge al­so con­sid­ered that af­ter surgery, the woman might be able to work but due to the resid­ual pain, she would not be able to work be­yond the age of 50.

The judge or­dered $340,639.94 for ex­em­plary dam­ages and gen­er­al dam­ages in the sum of $250,000, both with in­ter­est, $585,000 for loss of fu­ture earn­ings and $60,000 to pay for her surgery.

The au­thor­i­ty was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Ken Wright and Em­mi­lene Con­stance.