A former medical resident at Detroit Medical Center is suing the hospital system, saying he was fired in retaliation for blowing the whistle on the mistreatment of a patient who subsequently became quadriplegic.
Joseph Owens was terminated from the residency program in November, less than a month after he notified his supervisor of a series of avoidable missteps, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Wayne County Circuit Court.
A 69-year-old man was admitted to Detroit Receiving Hospital for an acute kidney injury on Aug. 24, 2023, complaining of weakness and a possible seizure.
Even though hospital staff knew he was a fall risk, the patient was placed in a sitting position on his hospital bed, with his feet on the floor and a bedside table in front of him, so that he could eat dinner. A hospital employee, known as a sitter, should have restrained the patient so he didn’t fall, but did not, according to the lawsuit against Tenet, which owns DMC.
The lawsuit also names Wayne State University, where Owens was enrolled in the medical residency program, and his superior, Dr. Shaheena Raheem.
After the patient’s eyes rolled back, he fell to the ground, striking his head and seriously injuring his spine. It appeared he had been having what is known as a grand mal seizure, according to the suit.
Despite the serious injuries, the patient was not taken to the intensive care unit, and there was no staff available to give him a head CT scan.
The next morning, the patient “was unable to move any of his extremities,” the lawsuit states.
It was later determined that he was a quadriplegic as a result of his spinal injuries and likely would never move his arms or feet again.
Although Owens was one of several residents and doctors in the room after the fall, he faced all of the criticism, he says.
Raheem sent him a letter on Sept. 6, complaining of his patient care. She also alleged he was unprofessional and chronically tardy.
Owens responded to Raheem a month later, saying the patient was “a fall risk” but was not properly secured by the sitter, which amounted to malpractice, the suit alleges. Owens says he was following the orders of his superior and did nothing wrong.
“The sitter for the patient breached the standard of care by not adhering to the fall risk when the patient was admitted,” the lawsuit states.
In an interview with Metro Times, Owens says he was terminated for blowing the whistle.
“I told the truth. That’s all I did,” Owens says.
DMC declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.
“At the end of the day, we had a person who walked into the hospital and was rolled out,” Owens’s attorney Dionne Webster-Cox tells Metro Times. “That’s what happened.”
According to Owens, there are “systemic problems” at DMC that deprive patients of decent care. For example, he says, a nursing staff shortage makes it impossible for many patients to receive timely attention.
“There wasn’t enough nursing staff to get a CT scan,” Owens says. “That should have happened within an hour. [The fall] happened around 5:30, and I was assured that he was going to get a CT scan at 7:30. It’s really sad that any of this happened.”
The CT scan wasn’t done until the next day.
Owens hoped to finish his residency and then take over his mother’s internal medicine practice in Florida. But he can’t do that without the completed residency.
DMC’s claims, which he says are false, are making it very difficult for him to get accepted into a new residency program.
“It has devastated my life,” Owens says. “I can’t get the jobs I want, and I have all this debt.”
