ANNOUNCER: Now, from CBS4 News,
this is Facing South Florida with Jim Defede.
Good morning, I'm Jim Defede and welcome to this special
edition of Facing South Florida.
As cruise lines try to recover from the pandemic,
a few are requiring proof of vaccination,
they argue they're doing this because they care about
the health of their passengers and crew,
certainly a noble reason.
Nevertheless, this morning,
we are going to take a closer look at the healthcare,
provided a board cruise ships.
I feel as though these cruise companies literally
anticipate perhaps killing people
due to the negligence of their agents,
that being their medical staff and they just budget for it.
That is Laura Goodloe and this is her with her father,
Richard Puchalski.
(instrumental music)
He was quite the character, he was wild in his youth,
he's the only person I know who was able to pull a permit
from Chicago and host his own parade
down a couple of streets one Saturday afternoon.
He loved to have parties, he loved food,
he loved being around family and friends.
Goodloe, her brother Cliff and the rest of their family
decided to take a cruise to Alaska in 2016
to celebrate Richard's 70th birthday.
However, after boarding Royal Caribbean's Explorer
of the Seas, Richard felt ill and made several trips
to the infirmary.
And that morning he had gotten up and still wasn't feeling
great, went down to the infirmary again.
and that's kinda when all the dominoes started to fall.
The ship's doctor was a South African anesthesiologist
who correctly diagnosed him as having congestive
heart failure, but gave him the wrong medication.
And even though they were in port in Juneau, Alaska
and could have had him properly cared for
at a local hospital, she sent him back to his cabin
where he collapsed an hour later.
My brother had called my husband in a panic
indicating that he was in the state room
and my father had collapsed.
And so my husband and I obviously ran as fast as we could
down to the state room.
When we got there, we saw my father lying on the ground,
the, Dr. Saunders was trying to resuscitate him
and I just remember thinking myself and saying out loud,
we're losing him, we're losing him,
because they had a defibrillator machine next to him
and it kept reading off the amount of time that had gone on
since he last took a breath.
And so it was five minutes and then seven minutes
and then 10 minutes and it's all the way up to 15 minutes
and they still don't have a pulse.
And not surprisingly, when they finally did inject him
with an epinephrine, which is an adrenaline inducer,
they were able to regain a heartbeat,
but at that point and time,
it had probably been over 20 minutes since he had dropped.
Cliff you were in the room when he fell,
tell me what happened.
He gets up and says, I have to use the bathroom
and, so he walks across the room and the door barely closed
and I just, I heard the thud on the wall a second later.
He was eventually taken to a hospital in Juneau
before being airlifted to Anchorage.
As you can imagine, the family wanted to get off the ship
to be with their father at the hospital,
but the cruise lines blocked them.
And they were, I think trying to follow up with us
to finalize our bills while we were getting off the boat.
And then maybe. Wait, wait,
wait a second, wait a second,
as you were getting off the boat to go to the hospital
where your father was being treated,
they were talking to you about your bill?
Yeah, we had to check out and pay all our bills
before we could leave the ship.
And so while my dad is sitting in a hospital
as a vegetable essentially, we're having to pay
Royal Caribbean out for our beverage packages
and internet packages and being,
make sure that they get made whole here.
And so that obviously left a bad taste in our mouth,
nobody from Royal Caribbean followed up with us whatsoever.
The bill however, was the least of their worries.
After about two days, there were doctors
and cardiac people and neurosurgeons
and he had, didn't have oxygen for so long,
he was essentially a vegetable.
So my sister and my mom and I had to sit down
and kinda make a decision 'cause my dad was always
kinda straightforward with what he expected out of life
and how he wanted things.
And, if, he wouldn't have wanted to live life at 75%
of what it was and this was obviously much less than 75%,
basically he was alive, but not living
if you understand what I mean.
So, we all agreed at that time that it was best
to let him die peacefully and move on.
And so sadly, we essentially watched our father die twice.
Laura your father was 70, he has a heart attack, he dies,
why the focus on the care that he received on the boat?
Why not just accept that this was the path
that this was gonna take?
I think that we all felt something in our gut
that just wasn't adding up right from the beginning.
We wanted to seek the truth and if the truth was that my dad
just simply had a heart attack and died, so be it.
And we were sitting there in Juneau, Alaska,
the capital of Alaska with numerous hospitals in town,
we were there for the day.
I think the message should have been, Mr. Puchalski,
you should go have a real professional look you over
and make sure everything's fine instead of just prescribing
some medication that ultimately failed.
And I think my, our family's message is,
I don't want this to happen to anybody else,
it's awful.
I'm hopeful that in pursuing this from a legal standpoint
and succeeding, that number one, we can promulgate change
with respect to the way these floating cities are operating
in terms of their medical staffing and their facilities,
or there's expert testimony that said,
if you just kept my father seated, comfortable resting
and got him off, he would be alive and well today.
And so, yes my brother had stated,
we don't want this to happen to anybody else,
it's not to say people shouldn't go on cruises,
but there really needs to be some fundamental changes made
by these corporate Goliaths with respect to the investment
or lack thereof into their medical staff and facilities.
The Puchalskis filed a lawsuit against Royal Caribbean
in Miami Federal Court and in 2019,
the family was awarded $3.4 million,
Todd Michaels was one of their attorneys.
So what we found in our cases is they hire doctors
from all over the world with minimal experience,
with experience that certainly isn't sufficient
to be the sole or one of two doctors on a ship
with 5,000 passengers.
Every doctor that we had had in one of these cases
is not even been certified to practice in the United States.
So if a passenger suffered an injury while getting
on the ship, the doctor would be able to treat them,
but the second that ship leaves,
these 5,000 people on there have nowhere else to turn.
Well, is that what it comes down to you think costs
that in other words the reason for hiring a non U S
medical personnel is because it's cheaper to hire doctors
and those who are not U S trained,
not U S certified or licensed, that it's easier,
cheaper to hire foreign nationals to provide that care?
Yeah, I think so, if you look at our medical system,
obviously doctors are people that we hold in high esteem,
they go through a lot of training, they have expertise,
they're pretty well compensated, even though it sounds
at first blush like, oh, that might be interesting
being a doctor on a cruise ship
if you think about what it is,
you're on these contracts for months,
you're away from your family,
they get paid a relatively low wage compared
to what they'd make if they were practicing
in the United States.
So it's almost as if they hire the doctors that can't find
suitable work anywhere else.
Do you think most people who get on a cruise ship
think that the medical care that they'll receive
is probably being provided by U S trained, licensed,
physicians?
That's what I was under the presumption of when I boarded
that ship and sadly to find out that the medical staff
is not licensed to practice medicine in the United States
is certainly disconcerting.
At one point in the trial, the defense counsel
were essentially admonishing us for not investigating
their own medical facilities before we got on the ship,
as if to say they know and are aware
that they're ill-equipped to treat individuals according
to the standard of care.
And it's on the passenger to research how poor infirmaries
they have on their boats.
And it's our fault that we went on a cruise ship that
they're providing subpar medical services on.
We asked Royal Caribbean to provide someone to discuss
not only the Puchalski case, but also the broader issue
of the medical care on board their ships, they refused
and instead sent us this statement.
"Mr. Puchalski's passing was a tragic event
and our thoughts remain with the family.
We are disappointed with the outcome of the lawsuit
and we stand behind our licensed and credentialed medical
teams who adhere to the highest standards of care
and are committed to the wellbeing of our guests and crew."
Notice their statement doesn't say where their medical teams
are licensed or what credentials they supposedly have.
You'll hear more about that later.
When we come back, we look at another case,
this one involving carnival.
And I kept saying to the doctor, please examine him,
please look at him, he's really ill, he's really sick.
I just couldn't imagine the doctor not taking the time
to examine Ron well.
More when we return.