Photo by Dalton Laing
Lena Clayton (second right), mother of Nurse Carol Waldron, surrounded by relatives and friends, is hugged by Keen Rowe, at the family's home in Grange Hill, Westmoreland, yesterday.
Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
While the police are yet to confirm that potassium chloride was used in yesterday's murder/ suicide in Montego Bay, chairman of the socioeconomic welfare committee of the Nurses' Association of Jamaica (NAJ), Noel Julius, said such a substance would be easily accessible to any nurse working in a hospital.
Nurse Carol Waldron, who was employed in the critical-care unit at the Savana-la-Mar Hospital in Westmoreland, could have injected her children with an overdose of potassium chloride in order to kill them at a hotel in Montego Bay, where they were staying.
"We have potassium chloride as a stock drug, so just about any nurse on a medical ward or in an emergency unit would have access to that," he said.
No close monitoring
There is not very close monitoring of drugs that leave the hospital either, he said, making it easy for nurses to take some of the drugs for personal use.
"They are just there and the medication cupboard has a key at times. But sometimes, they don't really have any keys and it could be the nurse who is responsible for that. So, it wouldn't be difficult to have access to that one," Julius told The Sunday Gleaner yesterday evening.
Potassium chloride is usually used, he said, when patients are considered to be hypokalaemic, which means that the blood has a low concentration of potassium. Potassium is useful in stabilising the rhythm of the heart.
President of the Jamaica Medical Doctors' Association, Dr. Myrton Smith, added that potassium chloride is also used as a replacement for patients who do not take in sufficient nutrition by the stomach or who vomit profusely, but the dosage administered to them is always given based on their body weight. In excessive doses, potassium chloride can kill.
"Once the potassium level rises above a certain level, you begin to get what you call irregular beats and then what happens is you can get a sudden cessation of cardiac activities. So, essentially, you have a cardiac arrest," he explained. "The death is not usually painful, but sudden."
NAJ wants counselling facilities for staff
The Nurses' Association of Jamaica (NAJ) is calling for more psychologists to be placed in hospitals to help medical staff deal with the stress that results from working in the system.
"We need to have that system in place to deal with staff members who really need the attention," says chairman of the socio-economic welfare committee of the NAJ, Noel Julius.
His calls follow the murder-suicide involving a Savanna-la-mar based nurse and her two children in Montego Bay, yesterday. Nurse Carol Waldron, it is believed, overdosed her children with potassium chloride before overdosing herself in a hotel room on the Montego Bay hip Strip.
No structured counselling
"When individuals are under stress, not a great deal of effort is being given to recognise that this person really needs attention," Julius said. "Usually, when individuals are talking about the illness of staff members, they tend only to focus on the physical aspect."
He said, at present, most hospitals do not have structured counselling services for staff, depending merely on a staff clinic that sometimes will refer the individual to a psychologist or psychiatrist if the problem appears to be psychological.
"At times, certain things are treated trivially and individuals who are really under stress are not taken seriously until something tragic happens before any effort is taken in order to deal with the situation," Julius said.
- G.M.
