A nurse who may be involved in the deaths of twenty patients in the hospital. At the beginning of March, the Wilhelmina Hospital Assen (WZA) received the first signal via a letter from GGZ Drenthe that something was possibly wrong in the hospital. Hans Mulder of the Executive Board looks back.
“Disbelief, can’t be true. That’s the first thing you think,” says Mulder in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata. “The letter said that a nurse had told in conversations during a treatment that he had been involved in the deaths of twenty patients, because he wanted to put them out of their misery.”
“When I read the letter I initially thought: what is this? You go to bed with it and you get up with it. Then you start thinking: what am I going to do with this? it soon became clear that we had to make a declaration. And then suddenly a train starts running that is also completely new to me as a driver. You end up in a world that you hope you would never enter.”
The letter from GGZ dates from the beginning of March. A month and a half later, the news comes out. “Then you walk around with that knowledge as a director for a month and a half. That does something to you,” says Mulder. “We have been in talks with the Public Prosecution Service (OM) and in order for the truth-finding to run smoothly, an independent investigation must be carried out. That means that it was only known in a very small circle for a while. At our hospital I could count that on one hand.”
As a hospital administrator, Mulder realized that the news would have a major impact. “What will this mean for the employees who have been in the eye of the storm in corona time and have to go through this again. And what will this do to those involved and next of kin in this investigation? Then you have lost a loved one and then you get even over this, you enter an uncertain period again with questions that do not yet have an answer. That is terrible.”
A number of relatives accused the hospital of not paying attention to their pain and suffering. “If that idea arose, I think it’s a pity and it was honestly not my intention,” says Mulder. “In the week after the announcement, we also spoke with relatives. First family detectives and then we as a hospital. At a later time we had another conversation and they went well. They have the same questions that we also have, we can not yet provide clarity. We first need the report from the Public Prosecution Service for that. Then we can continue.”
The WZA is not involved in the investigation. “It is a matter for the Public Prosecution Service, which conducts independent investigations and is engaged in finding the truth. I would rather have the report today than tomorrow, but that will take a while. It is not a running race, but a marathon.”