NSW: Nurse says she thought girl's paralysis "just a dream"

AAP General News (Australia)
04-16-2007
NSW: Nurse says she thought girl's paralysis "just a dream"

SYDNEY, April 16 AAP - The inquest into the death of a Sydney girl hit on the head
by a golf ball has been told a senior nurse thought the girl was having a bad dream when
she warned she couldn't move.

Vanessa Anderson, 16, was admitted to Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital with a fractured
skull on November 6, 2005.

She was scheduled for surgery on Tuesday November 8, but suffered a seizure and died
early that day.

The nurse in charge that night, Alison Perrin, told Glebe Coroner's Court today that
a distressed Vanessa "buzzed her" about 1am and said "I can't move", before closing her
eyes and lying limply on the bed.

"I thought she had had a dream, a bad dream," Ms Perrin told the inquest.

"It just didn't occur to me that it could have been clinically significant."

Despite Vanessa's claims she couldn't move, Nurse Perrin lifted the girl's arm and
let it drop to her side.

Ms Perrin told the inquest she thought Vanessa was in a deep sleep and that explained
her lack of reaction.

She acknowledged to the court that she should have notified a doctor then about the
episode, and she should also have recorded it in her log and completed a full set of neurological
tests on Vanessa.

Instead, Ms Perrin left Vanessa to help move other patients and failed to notify a
doctor or record the episode in her log at any stage.

After the episode Vanessa had awakened but had made no mention of the "dream", Ms Perrin said.

The nurse said she had taken this and Vanessa's general condition as confirmation of
her theory about a dream.

The inquest is continuing before Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanovich.

AAP pc/sg/wjf/jt/mn

KEYWORD: ANDERSON

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