Fired Sunrise nurse files suit

Ever since Sunrise Children's Hospital fired her as a nurse in connection with a baby's death in 2010, Jessica May Rice says her life has been a nightmare, where sleep doesn't come easily, but tears do.

"It's been a real struggle, I'm hanging in there," she said Wednesday, the day after her attorneys filed a lawsuit that charges Sunrise wrongfully terminated her from its neonatal intensive care unit and subsequently ruined her reputation.

Rice said she had to file for bankruptcy and likened her mental state "to someone dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome."

"There's been a lot of financial and emotional damage," she said of the firing, which came after the July 2, 2010, death of 2-month-old Miowne Obote. "I had to clear out my 401(k) to support myself. It's not easy being associated with the stigma of being an 'angel of death' when you've done nothing wrong."

Another Sunrise nurse, Sharon Ochoa-Reyes was also fired in connection with the baby's death and has filed a similar lawsuit against the hospital.

In the aftermath of Baby Obote's death - Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy ruled it a homicide after a catheter to the infant was found severed - criminologists speculated as to whether the pair of nurses associated with Obote could be "angels of death," nurses who say they kill patients out of mercy.

Both nurses had been called "persons of interest" by Las Vegas police in an investigation into "intentional patient harm," as authorities looked into how catheters came apart in the intensive care unit for children.

Catheters are used to draw blood and deliver nutrition and medication.

Rice said she finally found another job in home health, but even then "it was difficult." Her attorney said Rice is in counseling and receiving medication to cope with the pressure.

"People would read about me on the Internet and not want me any more even though I did nothing wrong when I worked in their homes," Rice said. "I've had patients cancel me because of what they've read on the Internet. That's made this new job a struggle."

Authorities have not said what evidence connected either Rice or Ochoa-Reyes to "intentional patient harm."

Criminal charges have never been filed in the case, which remains under review by Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson.

In Rice's 35-page lawsuit filed Tuesday in Clark County District Court, attorneys Kathleen Murphy Jones and Kathleen England noted that a federal arbitrator, acting on a complaint brought forward by Service Employees International Union Nevada, ruled in December that Rice should be reinstated with back pay.

Arbitrators now have ruled that both women should be reinstated with back pay. Sunrise has not complied, prompting the union to file a lawsuit that asks a federal court to enforce the arbitrators' decisions.

"I think the harm to Jessica and Sharon has escalated by Sunrise refusing to follow the decision of the arbitrators," attorney England said. "Both of these nurses went through an exhaustive arbitration process and should be reinstated. The arbitrator found no wrongdoing on their part, and still Sunrise has refused to abide by that ruling."

Sunrise officials said Wednesday they had not seen Rice's lawsuit and therefore could not comment.

Ochoa-Reyes, who had been employed at the hospital for 19 years, told the Review-Journal in November 2010 that nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit had been having problems with catheters breaking for months.

"Even though nurses reported the product failures, the hospital administration basically paid no real attention to it until babies got hurt," she said.

Ochoa-Reyes' attorney George Kelesis has argued that hospital officials were looking for a "scapegoat" for a long-standing and dangerous problem at the hospital with the intent of "deflecting attention" from their own failure to make necessary changes.

Rice's lawsuit said that police sent the catheters to a forensic lab, and in the spring of 2011, analysis showed that none of the catheter lines had been cut and "there was evidence of product defect and/or failure. To date, Metro has never released those findings to the press or plaintiff."

Attorneys for both Rice and Ochoa-Reyes, whose lawsuit also alleged that a police-requested analysis found that product defect or failure caused the "disrupted catheters," will not reveal how they know the results of the forensic tests that have not been made public.

In July 2010, Sunrise officials said they had asked Las Vegas police to investigate 14 incidents of "disrupted catheters" that tracked back to February of the same year. They said that one child needed emergency surgery and another was in critical condition: Baby Obote later died while the other child survived.

In the weeks that followed, the Nevada State Board of Nursing summarily suspended the licenses of the two nurses after police told the agency that each nurse was under investigation.

Sunrise fired them.

The mystery of what happened in the hospital's neonatal unit deepened in September 2010 when the Nursing Board ruled there was no evidence that the nurses did anything wrong. The board reinstated their licenses, but Sunrise officials have refused to rehire them.

According to the lawsuit, Sunrise officials did nothing to address an acknowledged problem with catheters until the two babies were hurt in May 2010. The lawsuit alleges problems with catheters had been ongoing since at least December 2009.

Sunrise officials did not do a substantive investigation to rule out product defect, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit notes that the forensic expert hired by Sunrise to test the catheter lines did not rule out product failure.

The lawsuit adds that Coroner Mike Murphy admitted his own investigators never physically examined the lines to reach a determination of homicide, instead basing a conclusion on the flawed analysis of the expert Sunrise paid for.

According to the lawsuit, the allegations against Rice have caused her emotional distress in addition to costing her her job.

The lawsuit asks for unspecified damages, naming as defendants Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center and CEO Sylvia Young, human resources director Robert Eisen, Dan Davidson, a hospital spokesman, and administrator Todd Sklamberg.