Pictou County doctor disciplined after death of woman in hospital

A doctor in Nova Scotia's Pictou County has been handed a professional reprimand for the way he treated a 30-year-old woman who died after being admitted to the Aberdeen Regional Hospital in New Glasgow, N.S., in August 2023.

The decision against Dr. Robert Aslan Perchik was announced this week by the Nova Scotia College of Physicians and Surgeons, the body which regulates the medical profession in the province.

When Shavonne Lees showed up at the hospital, she was suffering from extremely low blood pressure and a high heart rate. Unbeknownst to her family, she had contracted sepsis, a life-threatening condition caused by the body’s overreaction to infection.

Lees had physical and mental disabilities, but she was capable of communicating and making competent decisions about her care. She died the day after she was admitted.

Her mother, Sheila Lees, complained to the college about the treatment her daughter received. The mother said Friday she doesn’t believe a reprimand is enough.

"We would have probably liked to see a little bit more outcome, so, perhaps, a suspension until he fulfills the requirements they've asked for, perhaps the loss of his licence, because it was pretty major what happened," she said.

According to the disciplinary decision, Shavonne Lees was seen by an admitting physician when she first showed up at the hospital’s emergency department. The decision said Sheila Lees started advocating on her daughter’s behalf when, despite showing significant distress, she wasn’t seen again for some three hours.

Perchik took over her care at 7 a.m. at a shift change, but didn’t come to see her at that time. A nurse came into the room at 7:45 a.m. and injected Lees with a pain killer.

Perchik didn’t see her until 1:25 p.m., when he told the family he was admitting Shavonne to ICU. The ICU doctor started the process at 2 p.m., but according to the college decision, the actual transfer wasn’t made until 8 p.m.

”He never entered her room," Sheila Lees said of Perchik. "He stood in the doorway at 1:25 and said to her dad … she has urosepsis, she'll likely go upstairs.

"Upstairs could have been anywhere in the hospital, we had no idea. We never even knew how sick Shavonne was, we had no idea she was septic, we had no idea she was going into septic shock. We had no idea what sepsis even meant or could or would happen."

In his response to the college investigators, Perchik said he felt the family’s complaint against him stems more from a breakdown in communications, rather than a lack of appropriate medical care.

The college report notes that Perchik offered “his sincere condolences to the complainant [Sheila Lees] and her family.” Lees said the family has never heard from Perchik since that day in the hospital and she has never heard him offer condolences.

Perchik told the investigating committee that he had every expectation Lees would recover and so didn’t think it “appropriate to discuss emergency interventions.”