Part 2 - How to Fake a Labor and Delivery in a Hospital. But What About...

I'd like to address a couple of issues that some people brought up in the comments. They are important, and a large part of the reason people have problems with believing that Sarah Palin faked being pregnant with Trig.

The main issue tends to be that there would be at least a couple of staff members that would HAVE to come into the room to do a procedure or monitor vital signs because it might be hospital protocol. Or, the nurse supervisor and/ or Risk Manager would be notified in this situation. Let me take those issues one by one.

Part of this is the psychological aspect of it. How could a doctor and a high profile politician conceive of doing something like this, much less, get away with it? That will be the next post. This post will focus on the nuts and bolts of how a faked pregnancy could be gotten away with in a public hospital.

First of all, I can't speak for Alaska, but here in GA you can have your own private nurse monitor you at a hospital if you want. That nurse does not have to be affiliated with that hospital. When it would periodically happen at the larger hospitals I worked at, typically we would give that nurse the patient's chart for her to chart on through the night (or day). As long as the nurse was licensed, there wasn't a problem. It was a win-win situation for the hospital.

1. It was done at the patients request.
2. The nurse would be licensed in that state.
3. A nurse would be freed up to add another patient to her work load.
4. The hospital would benefit from the extra help, without having to pay her wages or taxes. The patient was paying for her.

The hospital is allowed to turn responsibility of charting, recording and monitoring over to that nurse. That nurse would take orders from the patient's doctor and record the doctor's order in the chart. If that nurse needed assistance with anything, she or he would either come to the nurses station or push the call button and one of us would help them. Other than that, we typically would not bother them. After all, that patient is theoretically getting the best care by having a nurse care for them with a 'one-on-one' bases.

Now imagine it is not a nurse providing that one-on-one care. It is the patient's doctor. A doctor that has staff privileges at that hospital. And the patient just happens to be the governor of the state of Alaska. If the doctor says that the governor does not want to be disturbed, and she is closely monitoring the situation, she is not going to be bothered! That doctor will be ordering any test or procedures that she wants to done. If there is not actual pregnancy, nothing needs to be done. I imagine she might hang a I.V. to make it look good, but she doesn't actually have to hang Pitocin to induce labor. There is no pregnancy! She is able to record in the chart the normal procedures that are done without doing them. I'm not saying that a nurse would not have been involved also, I'm saying that just having a doctor involved alone could be done, and I imagine the less people involved might be safer for Sarah and CBJ.

As far as the concern that the hospital Supervisor or Risk Manager might intervene, not necessarily in this situation. Those in upper management are under political pressure as much as any other state service related job. Here they are dealing with the governor of Alaska! At this point, her reputation about being vicious and vindictive with people who anger her is probably well known (source:palingates). Her doctor is most likely assuring them that the situation is under control. Her church runs the board of directors(source:palin's deception)

Also, this was done at night. Most of the upper management works during the day. This all took place in one shift period. I don't imagine this was a situation that they could have foreseen happening. By the time more people could be informed at to what was happening, it was over.

Here is the thing. If you believe that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy, as all of the evidence points to, then you have to believe that something went on at the hospital, there is no way around that. You also have to believe that Dr. Cathy Baldwin-Johnson was involved in it. There is no way around that either. The scenario I have presented shows how this could have been done without too much difficulty. Later, when the hospital had a chance to review what had happened in depth, I imagine questions were raised and discussed. But again, would they really have wanted to have pushed on this when the odds were stacked against them?

I believe that that is why Trig was not listed as being born there. I don't believe that Sarah didn't list it for privacy reasons, having it listed would only help her. I believe that this tale was so outlandish that a decision was made by upper management to not allow it to be listed. There was nothing that could be done after the fact, and they had to protect their reputation, but I imagine that there were those who would be upset that the hospital had been used as a part of this hoax.

I will do a separate post on the psychological aspects of why and how someone would be involved in this type of deception.