By Taylor MacPherson

Pine Grove nurse says medical supplies missing, malfunctioning night of inmate’s death

May 2, 2017 | 4:53 PM

One of the nurses who treated Shauna Wolf on the night she died said their emergency kit bag was missing several crucial items and other equipment was malfunctioning.

Wolf, 27, died while being held in custody at Pine Grove Correctional Centre in 2015. A public inquest into her death began Monday at Prince Albert’s Court of Queen’s Bench.

This afternoon the jury heard from Leah Lemauviel, one of the nurses who attempted to save Wolf’s life after she was discovered unresponsive in a cell in the prison’s disciplinary segregation unit. Lemauviel said the fight to save Wolf was frustrating because the emergency supply kit was not properly stocked and other equipment was malfunctioning.

When she observed Wolf’s blue face and swollen tongue, Lemauviel said she searched for an oral airway – a plastic straw inserted into the throat to open a passage for breathing – but was unable to find one.

“There were no airways [in the bag],” she said.

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Lemauviel said she and other medical staff lost more precious time trying to set up the unit’s emergency defibrillator, a device used to restart a heart using an electrical shock.

“It wasn’t properly set up,” Lemauviel said. “We needed to take it out of the package.”

Although the device did not administer a shock after it was finally connected to Wolf, Lemauviel said she felt frustration while attempting to unpackage the machine. Her frustrations did not end there, however. Lemauviel said the next machine connected to Wolf, a simple heart-rate monitor, did not give a reliable reading.

The heart-rate given by the machine when it was connected to Wolf’s finger was 88bpm, Lemauviel said, but the machine was not beeping in time with the heartbeat which led her to distrust the reading. After the incident Lemauviel said she connected the monitor to herself and found the reading did not match when it was compared to another reading given by a newer machine.

Lemauviel said the emergency kit was also missing Narcan (naloxone), an opiate-blocker drug given in emergencies to counteract possible overdoses. The drug is typically given whenever an overdose is suspected, Lemauviel said, as it will have no negative effects on a patient who is not overdosing but will save the life of one who is.

“We [were] not allowed to give Narcan at Pine Grove,” Lemauviel said.

Lemauviel said she has worked as a nurse in both federal and provincial corrections, and noted significant differences between the training and equipment available between the two systems.

“It was fairly different,” she said, “especially in emergency response.”

At the conclusion of the inquest, the six-person jury will present their conclusions regarding the cause and manner of Wolf’s death, and will be given an opportunity to make recommendations in order to prevent similar deaths from occurring in the future.

Taylor.macpherson@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @TMacPhersonNews