Latest news with #JeffClawson
CTV News
13-05-2025
- Health
- CTV News
Testimony wraps at coroner's inquest into overdose death of UVic student
Nearly three dozen witnesses have taken the stand over two weeks to lay out the facts surrounding the accidental overdose death of Sidney McIntyre-Starko – and the emergency dispatch procedures undertaken as the tragedy unfolded. A coroner's inquest has heard McIntyre-Starko and two other University of Victoria students ingested fentanyl-tainted cocaine on the evening of Jan. 23, 2024, in a dorm room on campus. McIntyre-Starko, 18, and one of the other students went into medical distress. Other students called campus security and 911 but did not immediately tell either that drugs were involved in the medical emergency. As a result, the 911 dispatcher began working through protocols for medical possibilities that did not involve an overdose. Eventually, one of the students admitted to the 911 operator that the students had taken drugs. When a security guard heard the student say that he administered naloxone, a drug that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose. One of the students experiencing medical distress survived, but McIntyre-Starko did not. The inquest heard there was a 15-minute delay between the time McIntyre-Starko collapsed until security injected her with Naloxone. Jeff Clawson, an American medical doctor, who has spent nearly 50 years practising medicine, testified via Zoom from Salt Lake City, Utah, on Monday morning. He helped design the Medical Priority Dispatch System used in B.C. and he told the inquest the 911 call in this case was one of the five or six most complex he's heard in his entire career. 'It was a really tough one. My heart went out to everybody on this call, from the patients to the dispatcher – everybody,' he said. Clawson said if the dispatcher had known immediately that the students had taken drugs, they likely would have gone to 'protocol 23' in his system, which applies to overdoses. 'Multiple patients unconscious is something we want to look at in multiple ways,' he said. Tuesday morning the presiding coroner will charge the jury with final instructions before deliberations begin. The two men and three women will then determine an official cause of death and come up with a list of recommendations that could possibly help prevent similar deaths from occurring in the future. They are not allowed to lay fault or blame on any person or entity for McIntyre-Starko's death.
Vancouver Sun
12-05-2025
- Health
- Vancouver Sun
U.S. firm that made B.C. Ambulance's 911 dispatch system told how to fix it
An American doctor who created the computer software used by ambulance dispatchers in B.C. was peppered with questions about how to improve the widely used system at a coroner's inquest on Monday. The five-person jury, which has entered its third week of hearing evidence about the 2024 fentanyl-poisoning death of a University of Victoria student, made several suggestions for change to Dr. Jeff Clawson. He is the founder of the Priority Dispatch system, which is used in most ambulance 911 calls in Canada, including all in B.C. Why, one juror asked, didn't the call-taker follow up on her suspicions and just directly ask the student who phoned 911 if the two unconscious patients had taken drugs, rather than follow the system's rigid rules about not asking leading questions? Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. 'We're definitely looking at it. It makes sense if it can be done right,' Clawson said. Sidney McIntyre-Starko, 18, and a friend collapsed in a UVic dorm, but the student who phoned 911 didn't reveal the three of them had taken drugs. She described her friends as turning blue and 'seizing,' which led the call-taker into the seizure protocol on her computer system — and therefore delayed the urgent life-saving response required to reverse an overdose. The inquest has heard the call-taker suspected the students could have overdosed, but was prohibited by the Priority Dispatch system from asking 'leading questions' such as one about drugs. Instead, Clawson testified, the call-taker asked several clarifying questions to try to get to the root of what happened. But the juror noted they all sounded the same — what happened before this? Was anyone else with them? What's going on now? — and didn't result in new information being provided in an urgent way. 'Instead of asking all of those multiple times, one of those (questions) could have been: 'Were there drugs involved?'' the juror put to Clawson. When the seizure protocol was chosen for this case, a box popped up warning the call-taker it was an unusual medical complaint for two patients. That required her to confirm she wasn't mistaken about this choice. Wouldn't that be a good place to ask the call-taker for more follow-up questions, since the inquest has heard it is highly unusual for two people to have seizures at the same time? Clawson said that change is under discussion, but said none of the 3,000 jurisdictions worldwide that pay to use his software have submitted this exact proposal for change. 'Maybe you can be the one that does,' Clawson told the juror. 'That (proposal) does make some sense, and that's actually on my list of things here that we want to look at based on learning from every event as much as possible.' Call-takers are typically not medically trained, so rely on the Priority Dispatch system to guide them through 911 calls by entering information provided by witnesses and then getting next-step questions and medical advice from the algorithm. A juror asked Clawson what potential changes could be made to the system in light of Sidney's preventable death, which happened nearly 16 months ago. He said possible changes that have been mentioned include improving the 'usability' of the breathing tool that call-takers rely on to get witnesses to test whether a patient is breathing. The inquest has heard that witnesses are unable to complete this test in nearly a third of cases. In Sidney's case, it took three people — including two security guards with first aid training — before it was completed, a full five minutes after the call-taker first asked for someone to do it. Other areas Clawson said could be changed include how to better identify when someone is having a seizure, and how to better handle calls with more than one patient. In Sidney's case, it was never clear on the 911 call which patient the witnesses were talking about when they reported medical information, so the call-taker did not realize that one student was still 'seizing' while Sidney was largely lying motionless. The seizure protocol guided the call-taker to ask a serious of questions that seemed bizarre when there were two patients: are they both pregnant or do they both have brain tumours? One juror asked if the software could be changed so that in a multiple patient situation, the questions would make more sense, such as probing about a poisoning, noxious gas or overdose? More to come … For more health news and content around diseases, conditions, wellness, healthy living, drugs, treatments and more, head to – a member of the Postmedia Network.
