Untrained Receptionist Glues Toddler's Eye Closed In Medical Procedure

An understaffed clinic in Quebec is in hot water after a staff member allowed an untrained, part-time receptionist to perform a medical procedure that resulted in a 3-year-old's eye being glued shut.

On July 1, Julia Vavatsikos took her 3-year-old son, Vincenzo, to Clinique Médicale Privée Jean-Pierre Savaria et Associes to check out a minor cat scratch on the boy’s eyelid. Vavatsikos was told Vincenzo would need medical glue to seal the cut. Since it was Canada Day, however, there was only one doctor on duty in the clinic, so an office assistant, a part-time employee with no medical training, was tasked with gluing the child’s eye.

The clinic’s only on-duty doctor, Jean Therrien, was in charge of the "crucial medical act of holding the boy in place," Dr. Marie-Andree LeBlanc, one of the clinic’s owners, told CBC. Unfortunately, the receptionist missed the laceration and proceeded to glue the child’s eye shut.

“My son was yelling, 'Mommy, mommy.' He couldn't open his eye and also the doctor looked like he was panicking,” Vavatsikos told CBC. “He was trying to open my son's eye with water and his fingers. He was even swearing at that point. I've never met any doctors that swear. At that point, I knew something was really wrong.”

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