Advertisement

Worker who spotted bad chemo drugs is no hero – he just did his job

Steve Mertl
·National Affairs Contributor
The total volume and final concentration were not included on Marchese's chemotherapy bag, Peterborough pharmacy assistant Craig Woudsma said.

The young pharmacy assistant who discovered chemotherapy drugs given to hundreds of cancer patients in Ontario and New Brunswick were diluted says he is no hero.

And he's right.

Craig Woudsma testified before an Ontario legislative committee looking into the blunder. He said he was just doing his job, The Canadian Press reported.

“It’s just part of the process, it’s part of our job, and it just happens that this check that we made had a broader impact than we certainly would have anticipated,” Woudsma, 28, who works at a small hospital in Peterborough, said on Tuesday. “But definitely not a hero, no.

“We’re not looking for glory or anything like that. What we do is kind of the same thing day in and day out, and we’re there for the patients.”

Absolutely correct.

[ Related: Watered down chemo drugs given to 1,200 cancer patients ]

We tend to pin the hero label on people a little liberally these days, I think, to the point we may be devaluing the currency of heroism.

The Oxford Dictionary defines hero this way:

noun (plural heroes)

1 a person, typically a man, who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities: a war hero

— the chief male character in a book, play, or film, who is typically identified with good qualities, and with whom the reader is expected to sympathize: the hero of Kipling’s story

— (in mythology and folklore) a person of superhuman qualities and often semi-divine origin, in particular one whose exploits were the subject of ancient Greek myths.

2 (also hero sandwich) North American, another term for hoagie.

Great sandwiches aside, I think we ought to be more careful with the term hero. Heroism seems implicit in some jobs, such as police officer or fire fighter, because of the risks they willingly assume.

But is every cop or smoke-eater a hero? Using that yardstick, we should also use the label for construction workers and coal miners, who often die on the job. What about war correspondents, who've been dying in record numbers in recent conflicts?

Are teachers who prepare the next generation for their roles in society heroes? No. Were the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut who died trying to shield their students from a mass-murderer's gun heroes? What do you think.

Since this is VE Day, you have to ask that if every police officer who slides behind the wheel of his cruiser is a hero, how do you classify the soldiers, sailors and airmen who risked their lives daily during the Second World War? If you read the exploits of decorated war heroes today, they seem almost superhuman.

[ More Brew: Force weakening in Canada as number of Jedi declines ]

Woudsma deserves recognition for spotting an apparent discrepency in the intravenous drugs his team was handling in the hospital's oncology department and asking questions.

The end result was a discovery that the pre-mixed batches contained too much saline solution, diluting the concentration by up to 20 per cent. Some patients had been receiving the watered-down chemo drugs for up to a year.

Experts have said the impact of the dilution on patients is probably low. Some 150 have died since the diluted meds began to be administered in February 2012, the Toronto Star said. But it's probably going to take time to learn what effect it had on the course of their disease.

Woudsma and his colleague, who didn't testify, did what they were supposed to do. They informed the senior pharmacy assistant at the hospital about the problem, which set the investigation in motion.

We should expect no less from anyone in their position.