The Case of Libby Zion and What She Means to the Medical Community

Sometimes the death of an individual has long lasting permanent consequences far removed from the tragedy for the family.  Physicians who presently are in practice are dated from either before or after the death of this individual.  Who was Libby Zion and why does she mean so much to physicians?

There is now a profound difference in the way all doctors are trained that can be dated to after Libby Zion’s death.  Although there is a touch of “when I was a child, I walked to school through 10-foot high snow drifts in the sub-zero temperature” when doctors my age trained we worked until we were finished.  What did that mean?  I worked for thirty-six hours and was off 12 hours.  The off 12 occurred if you were finished with your patient care responsibilities.  This was not all the time but it was when you were on primary hospital training and could last for three months at a time before you were rotated to another service with less time requirements.

In practice this prepared us for what can sometimes happen.  That is having to work through the night and then the next day.  Whether this was sound theory or practice was never really questioned.  It was the “way it had always been done.”

Libby Zion was an 18 year old freshman at Bennington College with a history of depression.  She was admitted to the New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center on March 4, 1984 during the evening shift.  She had a history of ongoing depression and was complaining of fever, agitation and jerking motions of her body.  No diagnosis was provided but she was admitted to the ward and cared for by two new physicians, one with eight months of experience and one with twenty months.  She was given a pain killer and a sedative and was felt to have a viral syndrome and that “she was acting out.”

At 3:00 am , she became more agitated and the doctor ordered restraints and an antipsychotic to be injected.  She was not seen again.  At 6:30am in the morning, her temperature was 107.6 and soon after she suffered a cardiac arrest and died.  It might have ended there except Libby’s father was Sidney Zion, a journalist.

Next…the long battle.

Tags: cardiac arrest, depression, Libby Zion, Sidney Zion

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Heart Failure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.