"The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm".  Florence Nightingale

As Maine healthcare expands coverage we must make sure that patient safety is at the forefront. Amy Strum of @MeNursesUnion called on the Maine Legislature to require safe nurse-to-patient ratios. “Hospitals love to talk about a nurse shortage. There is not. There is a shortage of nurses that want to work in the conditions we are forced to work in”. Dr. Michael Melia, Chief of Emergency Medicine at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, said that there has been a "level of violence across the department not just with that individual patient but because of overcrowding and boarding, that puts that patient and other patients at risk". 

Healthcare workers shouldn't be working in a culture of fear and silence when it comes to raising questions about patient safety: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/threats-discipline-fear-the-muzzling-of-b-c-health-care-workers-1.6236966 

As university students in the United States, we started this petition to seek justice for our fundamental concern - health. Our local hospital, Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, is the second largest hospital in the state of Maine, and we seem to all know somebody who has an issue at the hospital. As a result, we reviewed countless online negative patient experiences and discovered the hospital has not been attaining good patient safety ratings. This is surprising considering the President and CEO of Northern Light Health have targeted patient safety.

Let's take a look at one department in the hospital - the pediatric department. Study finds US paediatric medical errors kill 4500 children a year
(Harding, Anne.  BMJ : British Medical Journal; London Vol. 328, Iss. 7454,  (Jun 17, 2004): 1458. DOI:10.1136/bmj.328.7454.1458-b) 4500 children a year unnecessarily killed.

This petition is based on a pediatric critical care physician who alerted hospital administrators that serious patient safety issues existed at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center. Dr. Anne Yered, A board-certified critical care pediatrician, notified them that her colleague and Medical Director of the Pediatric ICU only did 1 year of a 3-year critical care fellowship. Critically ill children have died due to unqualified pediatric critical care physicians taking care of critically ill children in other hospitals in the United States. Dr. Yered was meeting with other physicians outside the hospital, hoping they could improve patient safety together. Dr. Yered has been threatened, to the point of a senior manager climbing through the woods in her backyard to confront her (this also happened to another physician who previously complained about patient safety issues at the hospital, and the same manager also violated her private property by hiking through the woods in her backyard unannounced).

Regardless of the intimidation that Dr. Anne Yered has endured, she continues to fight to protect critically ill children at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center.

In 2020 Dr. Yered brought patient safety concerns to the CEO and President of Northern Light Health. Physicians at the hospital were meeting about these patient safety issues, and Dr. Yered brought patient safety concerns to hospital administration. Shockingly, shortly after that, Dr. Yered was, without cause, required to leave her position at the hospital.

We, the public, need to know what is happening at the hospital. Are there other healthcare workers who are too afraid to come forward to divulge what is happening? We need to get to the bottom of what is occurring! We can't continue to go through these uncertain healthcare times with healthcare workers too afraid to step forward with concerns. When hospitals keep a physician like Dr. Yered quiet, they keep all of us quiet. How can we overcome invisible enemies like COVID when we can't even confront visible issues like abuses to patient safety? 

This petition needs to send a message that communities like us, students at a university, elderly people in nursing homes, rural communities, or others will not tolerate quieting healthcare workers who stand up for all of us!!

We encourage all people, patients, families, and communities to sign our petition. Our goal is an investigation into the concerns brought forward by Dr. Anne Yered.

The following are links to how patient safety issues are affecting our hospital: 

 

Northern Light Eastern Maine hospital is the worst-rated hospital for patient safety in Maine.

Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center was not even graded for Patient Safety by the national group LeapFrog, but recently the hospital has improved to a C rating. 

Northern Light Eastern Maine noncompliant with price transparency rules

Northern Light Eastern Maine has been penalized by Medicare for the last 3 years in a row

Northern Light Eastern Maine ER Chief says that healthcare workers at the hospital don't feel protected

Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center Bangor hospital allowed two patients under the age of 18 to be together unsupervised in a common area, during which time they engaged in sexual activity.

Black Medical Worker awarded $ 3 million in a racial discrimination case against Northern Light Eastern Maine (the hospital is appealing this jury decision).