| TV producer loses her life following cosmetic surgery |
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| Monday, 30 October 2006 | |
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Ms Charest and her husband Ronald Weinberg co-founded Cinar, producing several award-winning animated children’s programs popular throughout Canada, including Arthur and Caillou. The coroner, Jacques Ramsay, said that an alarm at the clinic which should have warned of a lack of oxygen wasn’t operating and that a nurse had left her unattended in a recovery room following the surgery. "I can only believe that there was a certain delay from the moment the patient was left alone and when she was discovered," Ramsay said. "All that doesn’t happen in the space of a couple of seconds." He added "But it could have been avoided." "In this case, the best back-up was to call 911." Ramsay said that while the alarm was probably was functional "the most likely scenario" was that it wasn’t on. He stressed that the cosmetic surgery itself went without a hitch and the problems occurred only afterwards. Ramsay commented on the fact that staff waited 35 minutes before deciding to call 911 for outside help after Charest stopped breathing. He also commented that staff at the Notre Dame clinic didn't take proper notes during Ms. Charest's surgery, and didn't take her temperature during surgery. Paramedics arrived 10 minutes after being called and Charest was resuscitated and taken to a nearby hospital, but died the following day because of a lack of oxygen to the brain. The Minister of Health in Quebec, Philippe Couillard called for more rigorous supervision of private clinics in response to the corenor's report. "They now operate in a big legal vacuum," said Couillard. The coroner said part of the problem lay with the legal grey area of private clinics in performing surgeries of all sorts in Canada. He said that the clinics in Quebec operate outside the strict rules that guide hospitals. He commented that such clinics require better quality control, and clearer protocols for emergencies. "I believe that standards in the private sector must surpass those of the public sector, or at least be the same level, never lower, The reality is that right now, surgical clinics like the Clinique de chirurgie esthétique Notre-Dame escape the legal guidelines and almost all the control mechanisms that are the fate of public establishments." |
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