The previous part in this series on forced electroshock in Connecticut concluded with the anticipation of documents from a FOIA request I filed with the Veteran’s Affairs Office. The purpose of the request was to obtain any and all patient records demonstrating patient harm from electroshock treatment occurring at the West Haven VA as well as maintenance records for the medical equipment used to deliver the treatment.
The request was fulfilled this past week containing the electroshock equipment maintenance records from 2015-2024 and… no medical records. In a letter from the VA Connecticut HCS FOIA Officer that accompanied the request was an explanation of what information was redacted from the reports as well as a statement that there were zero reports of patient harm.
I should preface the following with a reminder that I only have two years of experience as a biomedical equipment technician, but I took a look through the maintenance records and the most revealing find is that they do not perform the manufacturer’s recommended maintenance on the equipment.
For reference, you can thank /u/gigasnail99 from reddit for providing the maintenance specifications from the SigmaStim service manual and Scribd for hosting the service manual for the MECTA 5000Q (see p84).
While the maintenance records from the FOIA request include documentation that the ground resistance and leakage current of the electroshock devices were measured (a generic test required by the National Fire Protection Agency that is performed on most line-powered medical devices in a hospital), there is no documentation indicating that the biomedical equipment technicians working on the electroshock equipment ever ran a stimulus delivery test – as required by the service manual.
In short: these devices are required to be tested for their output as delivered to a patient-simulating load, however, this testing was never performed. That’s 10 years without testing the electroshock equipment which is used on U.S. veterans against their will.
Regardless of my expectation of their inaction on this matter, I have filed complaints with the Connecticut Department of Public Health and the Joint Commission.
Since no reports of patient harm were provided, little is likely to be done about any of it until the horribly maintained equipment ultimately hurts someone bad enough – then they can just blame the injury on the fact that the equipment was poorly maintained rather than on the procedure itself.
It’s really an impressive non-fault system they’ve created except for the fact that a person labelled with a psychiatric disorder ends up being harmed and a biomedical equipment technician takes the blame for it. (Sucks to be both at the same time, but, biomeds get unfairly blamed for this shit by default by design and people labelled with psychiatric diagnoses get… well… forcibly electroshocked is what they get.)
And thus concludes Part 4 of this series.