A California OB-GYN has been accused of negligence after a 23-year-old woman died hours after giving birth under his care.
The California Medical Board filed a lawsuit in the hopes of revoking Dr. Arthur Park’s medical license. According to the lawsuit, filed Wednesday and obtained by ABC23, he was on call at Adventist Health Hospital in Bakersfield in Sept. 2016 when Demi Dominguez came in, ready to give birth to her third child.
According to the Medical Board’s executive director, after the birth Park did not wait long enough before attempting to remove Dominguez’s placenta. Instead, Park immediately used clamps and his hands, and did not properly use pain medications during the process.
“The nursing staff documented that during the placental extraction, the patient was screaming in pain and moving around in bed, and in his note, [Park] described her as ‘agitated,’ and did not consider or record consideration summoning the anesthesiologist to add medication to the patient’s epidural infusion prior to attempting to extract the placenta,” the lawsuit states.
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While removing the placenta, Park “inadvertently perforated the uterus,” causing her blood pressure to drop. Yet, during repeated calls from nurses to examine Dominguez, who was reportedly pale and losing consciousness, Park did not believe that anything was wrong, and “did not order ultrasound imaging of the patient’s abdomen, did not order any blood transfusions or any other life-saving resuscitative measures.”
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After her condition worsened, a second doctor had Dominguez moved to the intensive care unit where she had two heart attacks and died about seven hours after giving birth. An autopsy later found that she died of postpartum hemorrhaging from a traumatic laceration.
The lawsuit asks for a hearing with Park to determine if the Medical Board can revoke or suspend his license. He has not yet been found guilty of any charges related to this case. However, Park’s license has been suspended before — he spent three years on probation for negligence during two deliveries in 1996 and 1997, according to the lawsuit.
PEOPLE has contacted Park for comment.
Dominguez’s family has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for her husband and children.
The maternal mortality rate has more than doubled in the U.S. over the last 30 years, despite medical advances, often due to insufficient health care.
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