Hospital wrongly declares 99-year-old woman dead

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This article was published 04/10/2016 (3451 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

People don’t often die from a sprained ankle; not even when they’re nearly 100 years old.

But that’s what happened to Dan Nemis’s mother… if only for a few terrible, grief-stricken seconds.

Sophie Nemis was a patient at Seven Oaks General Hospital for several weeks last month after suffering the injury. Her son was at an appointment with his doctor when his cellphone rang. A nurse at the hospital was calling.

“She said it three times: ‘Daniel, your mother has passed,’” he said Tuesday. “After the third time she says, ‘Whoops, wrong person.’”

Nemis said by then he had already fallen to the floor, overcome with grief.

Since then he has received apologies from the hospital, but said he’ll never forget how devastated he was when he received the call.

“Now when I get the phone call in future, my five siblings will cry, but I won’t,” he said. “My mother has already died.”

A Winnipeg Regional Health Authority spokeswoman said the hospital’s patient-relations consultant, patient-care team manager and chief nursing officer have all called Nemis and his mother to apologize for the mistake.

“The (deceased) patient passed away overnight and the nurse coming on shift was responsible to call the next of kin,” the spokeswoman said.

“The nurse looked at the wrong page in the chart binder, realized part-way into the call that she had the wrong name and apologized profusely.”

The spokeswoman said the hospital has reviewed patient-identifier policies with staff to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

“The mistake was extremely unfortunate and regrettable, and we are deeply sorry for any grief that may have been caused, even momentarily.”

Sophie Nemis, who will turn 100 Dec. 3, wasn’t impressed when she heard the story.

“I thought it was terrible announcing my death,” she said from her seniors residence Tuesday. “They’d already done nothing for me for three weeks.”

It’s not the first time she has made the news. Two years ago, Nemis received some notoriety when, just weeks shy of turning 98, she got a letter saying she had to appear as part of the jury pool for the upcoming fall sittings of trials at the Law Courts.

“I thought it was a joke,” she said at the time.

“At my age? About 20 years ago it would have been good. My mind was quite a bit clearer then.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca