New Medical Treatment?

BY PAUL TURENNE,WINNIPEG SUN

A Winnipeg hospital employee with no authority to treat patients has been arrested for allegedly trying to get a patient at Concordia Hospital to drink what may have been mouthwash.

Teresa Sawatzky, 41, has been charged with assault with a weapon after allegedly attempting to get a 25-year-old male patient to drink a small amount of liquid when he arrived at the hospital accompanied by police Saturday afternoon.

Court documents identify the weapon in question as an “unknown liquid substance,” but Const. Natalie Aitken, a spokeswoman for Winnipeg police, said the liquid is believed at this point to have been mouthwash or something similar, although that’s not certain.

Aitken said the man did drink a small amount of the substance, but suffered no ill effects.

Heidi Graham, a spokeswoman for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, confirmed Monday that Sawatzky works for the WRHA, but in a non-medical capacity. She declined to be more specific than that.

Sawatzky has been placed on administrative leave as a result of the incident, Graham said.

Winnipeg police accuse Sawatzky of approaching the patient at the hospital and trying to get him to swallow the liquid substance.

At the time, the man was in the company of police officers who had arrested him on charges of assault and resisting arrest and subsequently brought him to the hospital for medical treatment.

Aitken said the officers with the patient initially thought the woman was a nurse or other health care provider, but grew suspicious and asked some other staff members who the woman was. When they discovered she was not medical staff, they immediately arrested her.

It’s unclear at this point what her motive was for administering the substance, or whether that motive was sinister.

Aitken said it doesn’t appear the woman knew the patient.

Graham said the WRHA is cooperating with police, as well as conducting its own internal review.

Graham said hospital staff members must always wear a name tag with their photo and job title while they’re on duty.

A curtain of silence has fallen over the case of Teresa Sawatzky, a cleaner at Concordia Hospital who is facing charges of assault with a weapon. The circumstances of the case are bizarre. On July 16, a man was brought into hospital after having been Tasered by police in the aftermath of what is alleged to have been a domestic dispute. He had fallen on his face, his mouth was bloody and his lips were dry.

Ms. Sawatzky reportedly used mouthwash to clean him and water to comfort him, acts police observed, and arrested her. She is, after all, not qualified to administer sips of water.

In this case, however, it was not the water that was the weapon used in the alleged assault. Rather it was two small bottles of "coloured liquid" that even the police admitted at the time "might have been mouthwash" and now acknowledge that it likely was. Assault by mouthwash as a weapon is unusual under Canadian law.

As well as facing criminal charges for what most people, judging by the little information the police have released so far, would regard as an act of charity, Ms. Sawatzky has been forced to take "administrative leave" from her job at Concordia. A Winnipeg Regional Health Authority spokeswoman explained that "while it is important for all our staff to treat patients with compassion and dignity by helping them... they need to use their judgement... Even a glass of water can be inappropriate in some cases."

That may seem harsh -- Ms. Sawatzky's union certainly thinks it is -- but the WRHA at least speaks from a coherent policy. The police, however, have no such defence, and it is perhaps telling that they and officials in Manitoba Justice have not made any real attempt to mount one. Asked by the Free Press to explain to the public exactly what is happening here, the police decline to comment: "This investigation is still open."

The government's response is "we won't have a spokesman for you" because "it would be inappropriate for ministers or anyone from the province to comment at this time" when police are investigating.

This is the kind of issue that worries people about police. It is especially worrying for Ms. Sawatzky -- even her alleged victim does not understand why she has been charged. The police or the justice officials need to clear the air. This is either more embarrassing than they would like or more sinister than we can suspect, but either way, the public has a right to know.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 29, 2011 A12