NICU doctor sounded alarm about babies with broken bones. Why didn’t hospital call CPS right away?
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Dominique Hackey and his wife received some startling news on Sept. 3, 2023, about one of their twin sons who was in the NICU at Henrico Doctors' Hospital.
"A nurse was standing over Noah swaddling him, looked back and said I noticed his left leg wasn't moving, it was kind of discolored, I told the doctor on staff, got some x-rays, and we determined he had a fracture to his leg,” Hackey said.
While Hackey’s mother, a longtime NICU nurse, felt the injury was suspicious, Hackey said hospital leadership suggested it was accidental.
"That's what they told us, that it could have been done because an injection was given and maybe they did it too hard and it caused the fracture,” Hackey said.
Three days later, hospital staff found another baby with bruises on both of his thighs. A subsequent x-ray showed a left radial buckle fracture.
According to a heavily redacted report from the Virginia Department of Social Services, a NICU doctor told a Henrico police investigator that she contacted the NICU’s medical and nursing directors about that infant’s injuries and placed an alert in the “risk system.”
She then shared the results with three different radiologists and the baby’s mother. The radiologists told the investigator that they had told the NICU doctor this type of fracture raised suspicions for non-accidental trauma.
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