Administrator Comments on Rodent Infestation at Western Regional Hospital

In Monday’s newscast we showed you the food storage area at the Western Regional Hospital. The condition of that room, complete with rat infestation and just generally nastiness, came to a head on Friday after staff members who had been disturbed by the smell from the room for weeks went looking for answers and allegedly had to run for their lives after the rats attacked. At least in the media, Hospital Administrator Bernadette Nicholson has kept below the radar during the fallout. But did she slip down on the job, even if Regional Manager Melinda Guerra wouldn’t exactly call names? Today, News Five managed to obtain an audio interview given by Nicholson in which she gives her version of events.

Bernadette Nicholson

Voice of: Bernadette Nicholson, Hospital Administrator, WRH

“Recently, about a week ago, we saw some rat droppings and so that brought us to focus on the food pantry area and that is where we realized that we may have a problem there. We brought in the Public Health inspectors, the Infection Control nurse and from a team approach we started to approach the issue. We put in some measure by fixing different areas in the food pantry area and then we realized we still have the problem and that’s where we decided that we have to look a little deeper and that’s when we pulled out all the cupboards and behind the cupboards we discovered that we had some rat infestation there and that is where we pulled out everything out of the storeroom. We condemned what needed to be condemned and we are now looking forward to focus more attention in this area so we don’t have a repeat of this incident. I won’t issue any blame to anybody else, but as Hospital Administrator I take full responsibility for it. You know, we know we have weaknesses. We have weaknesses all around, and we hope the Ministry will continue to support us in closing these gaps so that something like this wouldn’t occur again.”

We note that Nicholson’s version differs completely from the one we have been given, and even from the version given by Regional Manager Melinda Guerra. We are told from credible sources in the Ministry of Health that based on their investigation into the matter, Nicholson wasn’t even aware of the crisis in the food storage room on Friday until much later that day.