Woods

WARWICK — The first doctor to examine Michael J. Woods and the nurse assigned to watch over him the day he died in the Kent Hospital emergency room testified Thursday as the negligence lawsuit filed in his death finished its third day in Kent County Superior Court.

Woods died of a heart attack in the emergency room July 26, 2006. His brother and executor of his estate, actor James Woods, is suing the hospital on behalf of his brother’s surviving son, Peyton. In his opening presentation to the jury, Woods’ lawyer, Mark B. Decof, claimed Kent Hospital doctors ignored warning signs that Woods was suffering from a serious heart condition and failed to take actions that could have saved his life.

The hospital has denied those charges. In his opening statement, hospital lawyer David W. Carroll said Woods, 49, a local businessman, two-time mayoral candidate and sometime actor who had appeared in small parts in several movies, came in with symptoms that could have been the result of other causes and he died while doctors tried to determine what was wrong.

Even if the heart condition had been identified promptly, Carroll said, Woods’ coronary artery was so severely blocked that there was nothing the hospital could have done in time to save him.

Thursday’s testimony was taken up by Dr. John McCue, the emergency room doctor who first examined Woods, and Gerald J. Quaranto, the nurse assigned to his case.

McCue was the doctor in the emergency room’s “express care” section, which was reserved for the least serious cases, the afternoon Woods came in. He saw Woods at about 4:37 p.m., according to Woods’ admitting form. Woods came in complaining of a sore throat, swollen glands and vomiting. But McCue said when he looked down Woods’ throat, it didn’t seem red enough to justify the complaint of pain. He said he thought it could be caused by an allergic reaction or an infection.

“I decided he needed more tests than I could provide in express,” McCue said. He said he had Woods transferred to the emergency room’s treatment unit, which handled more-involved cases.

McCue testified that Woods told him he had been suffering from the sore throat for a couple of days, but the admitting form and other witness testimony indicated that Woods had said his pain had started suddenly that day. McCue said Woods told him it was longer than that.

“I believe I asked him how long, and I believe he said a few days,” McCue said.

Decof used McCue’s and Quaranto’s testimony to return to the theme he had brought up in his opening statement, what he called a dearth of documentation on how Woods was treated in the emergency room.

Though Woods was admitted for the sore throat and McCue questioned that, Decof observed that the transfer, or his reasoning for it, wasn’t noted in Woods’ file.

Record gaps and inconsistencies cropped up in Quaranto’s testimony as well.

Quaranto testified he was with Woods until the nurse took his dinner break at about 5:50 p.m. He said that standard practice was that Woods would have been handed off to another nurse for monitoring for that period. But under questioning by Decof, he agreed there was no record in Woods’ file as to when that handoff took place or who the covering nurse was.

Decof also presented a summary of the case that Quaranto said he wrote the night of Woods’ death. The time of the note was listed as 6 p.m., about 90 minutes before Woods died. Quaranto said it had been written later in the evening, after Woods was declared dead at about 7:30 p.m.

On another form, which listed the tests and medications Dr. Kelli Naylor, the doctor who took over his case in the treatment unit, had ordered for Woods, a cardiac monitor was circled. Quaranto said monitor had not been circled the last time he saw the sheet, just before his dinner break, and he didn’t know how it was marked.

One of the complaints in Woods’ lawsuit is that he was not put on a cardiac monitor, a step that might have provided advance warning of his impending heart attack.

jhill@projo.com