A single sentence: "Your wife died last night, you find her in the mortuary." This is how a nurse from the medical ward of the "La Casa di Cura del Rimedio" clinic in Oristano addressed Giampiero Tomasi, the husband of Giorgetta Bido , 76, who died at 3:00 a.m. Thursday morning. He showed up at 1:30 p.m., visiting time, in the room where his wife had been hospitalized since May 5th for various conditions. This is a sad story that the woman's family, who live in Uras, have decided to share to raise awareness among doctors.
"What happened to us is shocking," says Paola Tomasi, the victim's daughter. "I had just gotten my father out of the car, and before looking for a parking spot, I told him to go find my mother. Then, a few minutes later, he called me in despair, saying she had died. I arrived at the ward, and as soon as I saw that my mother's bed was empty, ready to be taken by another patient, I started screaming. I was out of my mind; I couldn't understand anything. The nurse also told me that my mother was in the mortuary and that I could go there without any problems, and I went to the room. She was alone on a stretcher covered with a sheet."
Paola Tomasi then asked the doctors for information: "The doctor, who was off duty when the death occurred, told me that the death occurred at 3:20 a.m. due to various complications and that they did everything they could to save her, but also that evidently someone had forgotten to notify the family immediately . She apologized profusely, saying that what had happened was extremely serious."
Yet from 3:20 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. the next day there was plenty of time for a phone call: "Instead they preferred to take her directly to the mortuary and that was it," says Paola Tomasi, who yesterday also asked to be seen by the clinic's general manager. "They told me to show up on Monday, but maybe that doesn't make much sense."
The general director of the Madonna del Rimedio nursing home, Mario Alberto Floris, said: "In the ten years I've run the facility, a case like this has never happened," he explained. " I apologize to the family; it was clearly a miscommunication . However, I want to clarify that there was no medical error, and that the woman's daughter, when she found out her mother had died, didn't treat the nurses very well ."
