Missing from hospital for 17 days, stepped over TWICE by orderly, in stairwell where found dead.

[Nine]

14. Not sure why some are blaming the orderly.

Orderlies are not trained to help unconscious patients. As far as I can tell, the orderly did what he was supposed to do - report the situation to a higher-up. The nurse also seemed to have done what he or she was supposed to do:

Stephen La Plante, former chief of public safety for the city Public Health Department, which formerly oversaw security at San Francisco General, (said), "It's the deputies who go check, who perform the well-being check for anyone found outside a hospital ward... That is just the standard of practice in American hospitals. I would never expect a nurse to go outside the ward, down a hallway and into a fire escape stairwell. That is automatically the purview of the security force."

It's possible that whatever deputy was assigned to check on this is the person directly at fault. There may be other factors. Did the hospital do a thorough enough search when the patient went missing? How did the woman end up in this area that was supposed to be alarmed?