More Blame Game: Former Secretary testifies Dr. Charles Smith Blamed Staff For His Failure To Respond Promptly To Phone Calls:

"BECAUSE WE -- THE SECRETARIES ALWAYS SEEM TO, SORT OF, BE BLAMED FOR HIM NOT GETTING HIS MESSAGES. HE WOULD SAY, OH, I DIDN'T GET THE MESSAGE."

MAXINE JOHNSON TO THE GOUDGE INQUIRY;

In a previous Blog I reported Maxine Johnson's testimony at the Goudge Inquiry that she was upset to learn that Dr. Smith had blamed a lack of administrative resources for his failure to produce key reports on time.

(See previous posting: The Blame Game: Dr. Charles Smith's dubious claim that his reports were delayed because of lack of administrative support.)J

Johnson, who initially served in a secretarial pool that assisted the pathologists at the Hospital For Sick Children, and later worked directly for him, also testified that Smith blamed the secretarial staff for the many calls from people such as prosecutors, police officers, and anxious family members, that he did not return.

Johnson told Commissioner Stephen Goudge that the secretaries developed a special system for drawing the messages to his attention: They attached them to his computer monitor with Scotch tape.

She explained to Commission Counsel Robert Centa that they took this precaution:

"Because we -- the secretaries always seem to, sort of, be blamed for him not
getting his messages.

He would say, Oh, I didn't get the message.

So we developed a -- a system, whereas -- if you put it on his computer; we always know that he's going to sit in his chair and turn around to his computer screen,
so the message would be there.

And if the computer screen was full, which sometimes it was, we would put it on his chair, because he'd have to remove it to be able to sit, so he would
definitely get the message.

Johnson also expressed the staff's concern that important requests made by Smith's colleagues at the Hospital for the results Dr. Smith had conducted on specimens from living patients were languishing without response.

For example, Centa showed her an email sent to Dr. Smith, with a blind copy to her, dated February 20, 2002, which read, in part: "Dr. Grant and his staff has been calling several times to get results on specimens since December. They state that this is a, 'HAM/ONC (Hematology/Oncology) Case'."

Johnson agreed with Centa that the delay was serious because the results were needed in order to proceed for possible radiation treatment and ..."it's a very long time for surgical specimens to still be signed-out.

She responded to the urgency by sending a copy of the email to the late Dr. Larry Becker, who was head of the Hospital's Pathology Department at the time, in order to prompt his intervention.

"There were ongoing issues in terms of Dr. Smith getting his reports out in a timely manner (at the time," Johnson said.

Johnson's testimony appears to back up the comment of an unnamed senior official of the Chief Coroner's Office who observed at a high level meeting that Dr. Smith would not take responsibility for his acts - and tended to blame others.

This Bloggist cannot understand why the famed Hospital did not fire Smith years earlier in the face of its knowledge of his well documented pattern of delays which posed significant risks to the safety and treatment of its trusting patients and their families.

Where was its sense of responsibility?

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;