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The Story behind the story: Joan Walters -
The Hamilton Spectator
The 2008 Michener Award finalists talk about their
award winning stories and the people who helped make them happen -
Michener Awards Ceremony, June 10, 2009
Joan Walters
The Hamilton Spectator |
The Hamilton Spectator: Following an extended outbreak of
Clostridium Difficile at Burlington’s Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital
that claimed the lives of 91 elderly patients, the newspaper began investigating. The coverage was crucial to action taken by the
Ontario government to increase funding for infection control and
require hospitals in the province to report publicly on outbreaks of
C. Difficile infections.
YOUR EXCELLENCIES, DISTINGUISHED GUESTS, AND FELLOW NOMINEES
On behalf of my teammates Naomi Powell, Carmela Fragomeni and Denise
Davy, and also our editor-in-chief, David Estok, thank you for this
honour – especially in the presence of so many colleagues from other
media whose work is so strongly representative of journalism that
makes a difference.
Last May, a small, crowded hospital in our area disclosed that 91 elderly patients infected with the superbug - the hospital superbug
C. difficile - had died in a two-year outbreak that had never been
made public. As well, they disclosed that experts that they had
called in, after fruitlessly trying to bring this outbreak under
control, had determined the outbreak began seven months earlier and
was four times deadlier than the hospital knew – until they brought
in the experts
We obviously jumped on the story – but within 24 hours, we learned
that the Ontario government would do no further investigation or
take any further action. It had been handled, they said.
I can remember standing in the newsroom when we received that news
and there was a stunned silence - then someone asked: What if these
had been babies? Would they have done an investigation then?
And that was where we began.
These were elderly people who entered the hospital in perfectly good
health to have simple things like hip replacements done and they
ended up dead.
And the part that puzzled us was that the Ontario government had had
almost two and half years of warning from the province of Quebec,
where this specific bacterium, in an epidemic form, had ravaged
hospitals there and killed more than 2000 people.
So Ontario had had plenty of warning to set up a system, track the
bug’s path and help intensify efforts to prevent deaths.
So how could this happen?
In developments that will be very familiar to every journalist in
this room including lots of others as well, we found no
accountability, no responsibility and a totally dismissive attitude
by the province, the hospital, and the whole public health system.
Everywhere we went, patients were told repeatedly there was no
problem with infection control.
But there was.
Ontario’s vaunted health protection system – which was supposed to
have been fixed after SARS – was broken. In fact, the deaths at
Joseph Brant Hospital were only a small share of what we discovered
was a rampaging problem at other Ontario hospitals – especially
small ones.
Over eight months, in more than 100 stories and in a five-part
series, the Hamilton Spectator exposed the system’s cracks. We
ultimately accounted for more than 450 deaths of elderly patients at
just 22 of Ontario’s 158 hospitals. It was the only death and
infection count ever done.
Two weeks into our coverage, it was announced that public reporting
of C. difficile would become mandatory. A package of new patient
safety initiatives followed and was later strengthened to include
infection swat teams for hospitals, and new funding for infection
control. This year, Ontario will finally begin doing what almost
every other jurisdiction in the world does with hospital infection
deaths - they’ll start to count them.
This story, though, was about people, the dozens of families who
bravely made public incredibly intimate, humiliating details of
their loved ones deaths. There were two in particular who stood out
for us which we wrote about at length - the daughter of 90-year-old
Ellen Walker, for example, who actually day-by-day watched her
mother spiral into a horrific death, punctuated by the relentless
bouts of savage diarrhea that afflicted just about everyone who
died. Or the family of an 80-year-old man named Whitey Allen, who
entered hospital perfectly hale and hearty for a routine hip
replacement, caught the bug and died in 20 days. His children
thought he died of a stroke, until the hospital told them two years
later that C. difficile was at play.
These shocked surviving extended families, husbands and wives, the
daughters and sons – they trusted us to do what they believe we are
supposed to do. They told us their stories expecting we would help
prevent others from confronting the heartbreak they faced.
We must always keep their faith. Especially when times are hard in
our industry, as they are today. We must maintain our role as
watchdogs, as our readers and viewers expect we should.
They are right. One of journalism’s most sacred public duties is to
shine a light on things that should be known and must be changed.
We must never breach that trust.
Thank You.
Joan Walters
Michener Awards Ceremony
June 10, 2009
Back to 2008 Award Winner
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