Ullyot meets with Wiseman

Ullyot met with Wiseman on April 26 to discuss the concerns that the anaesthetists had brought to her attention. In preparation for that meeting she compiled a list of all the cardiac cases and their outcomes. According to her list, in addition to the four cardiac patients who had died, another was making a rocky recovery in the ICU. She gave this description of her meeting with Wiseman.

I told him I wanted to talk to him about the pediatric cardiac cases, that the section, the people who were involved in providing anaesthesia for those cases were concerned that the mortality was high, and that the children who did survive had long ICU stays, and some of the complications seemed to be unusual.

And he said something about, well, the mortality is not that high. I said, Nathan, the mortality is 30 to 40 percent. He said it's not that high. I said, well, here is the list of the kids, and I gave him this one. These are the children that had been done. (Evidence, page 31,245)

Ullyot was asked why she had gone to Wiseman with this information. She gave the following testimony.

Two reasons; one is because I knew him very well and I worked with him on many committees, and he looks after cardiac, he looks after surgery at Children's. He's the real working head of cardiac surgery.

The other question was, who else? Who else would you take it to? I suppose the only other person you might think of is taking it to Dr. Odim. And I particularly did not want to do that, because I felt that there was a sense within my department and nursing, and even outside of there, that we were suggesting that Dr. Odim was the whole problem. (Evidence, page 31,248)

Ullyot felt that the members of her department had been constantly questioning the way that Odim practised and raising concerns about communication. She thought the program was in need of repair, but she did not want to antagonize Odim at that point.

Ullyot said she left Wiseman a copy of her notes, but she did not question him about what he intended to do with them.

In his testimony, Wiseman said he did not recall being given the list at the April 26 meeting with Ullyot. However, the evidence seems to point to no other conclusion than that he did receive it when Ullyot said he did. She did not hear back from Wiseman before May 16.

Wiseman testified that during this period, he had a number of conversations with Odim about individual cases. He said that Odim was concerned about a number of the outcomes, but provided reasonable explanations. Aside from what happened in the Ulimaumi case, Wiseman testified that Odim had left him with the impression that there were no serious technical problems.

Wiseman did not pursue the matter any further with Odim.