Grand jury faults nurse training in O.C. jail death

A grand jury has concluded that a 31-year-old La Habra woman who died in June in the Orange County jail system’s infirmary might have survived her heart attack if nurses had been properly trained in basic emergency techniques.

The nurses’ first response after Vicki Avila’s collapse was to find a paper towel to wipe blood from her nose. The nurses were slow to give her cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and a defibrillator was not used until nine minutes after she fell, according to the report released Monday.

When CPR is administered immediately after a heart attack, the chance of survival doubles or triples. If the defibrillator is used in the first three minutes, the chances of survival are 49% to 75%, the jurors reported.

The jail, the 19-member county grand jury reported, “has appeared to staff the jail infirmary with nurses lacking adequate emergency medical skill and/or regularly scheduled skills maintenance training.”

Howard Sutter, spokesman for the county Health Care Agency, which provides medical care in the jails, said the agency was reviewing the report.

Sutter declined to say whether the nurses had received proper training to treat cardiac arrest.

Avila, the mother of two young children, was arrested June 10 on suspicion of assaulting a police officer. The next day her family was told that she had died, but family members complained in an interview with The Times at the time that no other information about her death was released.

The grand jury reported that when Avila arrived at the jail, guards used a stun gun to subdue her after she got into a fistfight with her cellmate. But the stun gun shot was not the reason for Avila’s placement in the jail infirmary, jurors reported, and she was provided medical care for an undisclosed reason.

Later that night, Avila collapsed during dinner in the Central Women’s Jail infirmary in Santa Ana. An undisclosed number of nurses witnessed her collapse, came to her aid and noted that she was gasping for air.

The nurses initially focused on wiping blood resulting from a cut to her nose. Another nurse was sent to retrieve an oxygen bottle and ammonia capsules to revive her.

When the oxygen mask was placed on her, it was done improperly. The nurses did not initially administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the jurors reported.

Nine minutes after Avila’s collapse, nurses used a defibrillator to try to revive her heart, but it was too late.

The jurors said they found no evidence that guards had beaten Avila, as her family suggested after they viewed her bruised body.

Sister-in-law Brenda Avila said, “We wish no harm on those people, and I don’t want to point fingers, but had they been properly trained, a big loss could have been avoided.”

The Orange County jail system has been under scrutiny over the last year largely because of the deaths of Avila and John Chamberlain, an inmate at Theo Lacy Jail in Orange who was fatally beaten by other inmates.

garrett.therolf@latimes.com