Mother considers legal action after alleged poor care for injured son at Fort St. John Hospital

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — The mother of a 15-year-old whose leg injury was allegedly made worse after receiving poor healthcare at Fort St. John Hospital is considering taking legal action.

Melanie Jansen’s son Hudson wiped out on his bicycle near their family home on Tuesday, May 6th, injuring his knee. 

In an interview with Energeticcity.ca, Jansen claimed a pair of misdiagnoses on the injury and a lack of adequate care led to his injury becoming worse.

Jansen also said she’s been receiving legal advice and considering taking legal action.

“I don’t want to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing, but yes, that is my next step,” she said, adding she feels this is bigger than just her son.

“This is not about blame, this is about accountability. They have lost the trust of an entire community.”

When tapped for comment, a representative from Northern Health provided Energeticcity.ca with a statement saying it takes concerns about quality of care very seriously.

“Northern Health is aware of the concerns which have been raised publicly about the care a patient received at Fort St. John Hospital and has reviewed what occurred in this case,” the statement reads. “To respect and protect the privacy of patients, Northern Health cannot speak to the specifics of individual patient care.”

Shortly after Hudson fell off his bike, Jansen said she was told about the injury by another of her children and went out to help her son. “I got him, and he’s like, ‘it’s my knee, something’s going on, it doesn’t feel right.’”

Jansen told Energeticcity.ca she brought Hudson to the emergency room at Fort St. John Hospital at roughly 6:30 p.m., but despite being in a wheelchair and in immense pain, they waited hours before being seen by a doctor.

“They did x-ray him shortly after we had been triaged, and then we sat there until midnight and they took us in and put him on a stretcher in the hallway. The doctor came in maybe 15 or 20 minutes after he was put on the stretcher.”

Jansen said the doctor who saw her son claimed that, after looking at his x-ray results, everything appeared to be “fine.” 

Her son was given a tensor bandage, a set of crutches and told to take over-the-counter painkillers, although Jansen said a nurse advocated to the doctor that he needed stronger pain medication, ultimately providing them with a combination of acetaminophen and codeine.

However, the next day, Jansen said she was contacted over the phone by the doctor who had treated her son while she was at work.

“She said, ‘you need to get back into the hospital immediately, your son needs a splint,’” she claimed.

“I said, ‘okay, am I going to have to wait there all day?’ And she said ‘no, I’m going to phone ahead into emergency, the triage, and let them know that you’re coming.’”

Jansen left her meeting, picked her son up and took him to the hospital. She said they arrived at 1 p.m., by which time she reports having received a voicemail from the doctor saying the emergency department had been informed they were coming.

However, when they arrived, Jansen said they were told they needed to wait for a room to open up for them.

“It was about an hour and a half, and they finally took us into the room, then a different doctor came in, and he was with… I don’t know if it was a student doctor, or what,”  Jansen explained.

Jansen said that according to that doctor, Hudson had torn his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), one of the ligaments connecting the thighbone to the shinbone. Those bones had also reportedly moved six millimetres out of alignment in the time since his injury.

The new doctor told Hudson and Jansen to wait while they consulted a surgeon in Dawson Creek. 

After 30 minutes, the “student doctor” returned, allegedly telling the pair to return to the waiting room, where they waited until 6:30 p.m.

“[The student doctor] came out and said ‘the orthopedic surgeon is still busy, so you guys might as well just go home and wait for the phone call,’” Jansen explained.

“They didn’t splint him, they didn’t give us a care plan for him until we get to see the surgeon, nothing. They just sent us home, still just the tensor bandage and the crutches.”

The following morning, Jansen was contacted and told they’d have an appointment with the surgeon on Wednesday, May 14th, more than a week after the initial injury. 

“We got to the Dawson Creek hospital [on the 14th], and the first thing the orthopedic surgeon said was ‘why is his leg not in a splint?’ And I said, ‘you’re going to have to ask the Fort St. John Hospital that question, because that’s how they sent us home.’”

The surgeon took another x-ray, Jansen said, identifying a broken bone that the Fort St. John Hospital’s doctor never mentioned.

“The ACL is torn, but what happened is when his knee went out, the ACL actually broke a chunk out of the top of the bone, and it’s still attached, it’s hinged but the ACL is also still attached to that piece of broken bone,” Jansen said.

“So, every time he bent his knee, the ACL would pull up on the bone.”

Jansen also said the surgeon told her and Hudson that the bones had moved an extra millimetre out of alignment, meaning the damage became worse because of his lack of a splint.

The surgeon splinted his leg, and told Jansen to schedule another appointment in four weeks to reassess. In the meantime, she claims she hasn’t heard from Northern Health or the hospital regarding the situation, despite a viral Facebook post.

Jansen expressed frustration at how Northern Health has handled the situation.

“I understand [the privacy concerns], but why haven’t they reached out to me?” she asked. “Why not?”

She also said her son has had a hard time since the injury, especially after learning it had become worse.

“To go into an appointment, and to have a surgeon say it’s worse than when you walked in the first time because of lack of care… It’s been really hard on him,” Jansen said, through tears.  “It’s been hard on our family.”

After her post about the situation went viral, Jansen received an outpouring of support from many residents and some local figures, including MLA Jordan Kealy, who confirmed on Facebook on May 22nd that he had spoken with her about it.

Kealy is also currently urging other residents to reach out to him with their stories of dealing with the healthcare system.