Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office recently issued a secrecy order protecting the identity of a nurse who was fired twice over patient abuse.
But when The Dallas Morning News questioned the order this week, the attorney general’s office backtracked.
“It was decided that the original ruling was imperfect and a revised ruling needed to be issued,” Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean said by email late Wednesday. No revision had been made public by Friday afternoon.
Parkland Memorial Hospital sought the order in a June 30 letter to Abbott, who’s the Republican candidate for governor. It argued that disclosing the nurse’s name to The News would endanger him.
Yet by that point, The News had independently verified the name — Sherwin De Guzman — and published an article using it.
The article described how Parkland caregivers strapped down a spitting psychiatric patient in March, and one of De Guzman’s fellow nurses shoved a toilet paper roll into her mouth. State rules prohibit obstruction of a psychiatric patient’s airway or ability to communicate.
The article also noted that Parkland is fighting a federal civil rights lawsuit stemming from the 2011 death of another restrained De Guzman patient. The death led to a series of government inspections and a virtual federal takeover of the hospital.
In its letter to Abbott, Parkland provided an electronic link to the article but did not detail its contents.
It’s unclear why the attorney general’s office would mandate secrecy regarding someone with a disciplinary history whose identity was already public. Abbott’s spokeswoman pointed to the office’s heavy workload, saying that “we issue dozens of these rulings every day.”
Parkland lawyer Thao La, who wrote the letter to Abbott, offered this explanation in an interview: “The AG felt like he [the nurse] was being targeted by The News.”
When preparing the article in early June, the newspaper asked Parkland for personnel records of everyone who was present during the toilet paper gagging. The hospital is subject to the Texas Public Information Act — it’s a government body that collects over $400 million annually from Dallas County taxpayers.
The act generally requires disclosure of basic information about government employees, such as names, job titles and pay. But there’s an exception for public hospital employees if disclosure “could reasonably be expected to compromise the safety of the individual.”
Parkland cited that language when, in late June, it asked the AG for permission to withhold De Guzman’s name. It argued that the safety exception applied to former employees such as him, although the law says nothing about former employees.
Abbott’s office previously let Parkland suppress information about another ex-employee, the hospital’s letter noted.
The latest secrecy order was issued two months ago. But its relevance to De Guzman didn’t emerge until this week, when Parkland finally released the personnel records. The nurse’s name was blacked out, but The News determined his identity from unredacted portions of the documents and previously released material.
Parkland fired De Guzman and two other nurses over the gagging, the records show. They say he “participated in the restraint,” failed to report colleagues’ improper techniques and failed to report an injury the patient suffered.
De Guzman filed a written appeal, saying he had tried “to shorten the restraint time” and “cannot remember everything that happened.” He added that he “was not the primary nurse of the patient nor the charge nurse,” and believed that a supervisor had made the necessary reports.
Parkland responded to the appeal by reclassifying De Guzman’s departure as a “voluntary resignation in lieu of termination.” The records don’t explain why. De Guzman has not responded to interview requests.
The hospital previously fired him in 2011 for failing to report a patient’s “aggressive treatment by members of the Dallas Police Department.” He was reinstated; again, the records don’t say why.
Parkland also disciplined De Guzman two other times, the records show. In 2013, he was suspended for not undergoing training in the management of aggressive patients. And in January of this year, he was cited for failing to “assess patient or intervene before patient placed in restraint chair.”
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