Background: Spring Valley Senior Living and Healthcare Campus in Spring Valley, Wisconsin (Google Maps). Inset: News footage of Mary K. Brown during an earlier court appearance (WQOW).
A Wisconsin nurse pleaded no contest to one charge related to her decision to amputate a nursing home patient’s foot without his permission.
Mary K. Brown, 40, initially pleaded not guilty to charges of physically abusing an elderly person, mayhem, and neglectful patient care due to an unauthorized procedure she performed in 2022. After these charges surfaced, Brown’s nursing license was suspended. She later admitted to amputating the left foot of Doug McFarland, aged 62, because it had become dead tissue as a result of severe frostbite.
Court documents made available by local ABC affiliate KSTP revealed that neither McFarland nor his medical team authorized Brown to perform the amputation — she proceeded without consent.
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KSTP reported that Brown was employed as a nurse at the Spring Valley Senior Living and Healthcare Campus in Spring Valley, Wisconsin, in May 2022, while McFarland was being treated there after a fall at his home earlier that spring. McFarland got severe frostbite in his feet as a result of the fall, and both feet became necrotic.
According to court documents, Brown described McFarland’s condition as “mummy feet” and wanted to amputate “to make the quality of life better for him.”
Investigators spoke to several of Brown’s colleagues at the facility, who said that on the morning of May 27, 2022, McFarland still had both feet. That night, one of them was gone. It was only discovered after the fact that Brown had not gotten consent from McFarland or his physician to perform the amputation.
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Court documents reportedly stated that when investigators spoke to an administrator at the facility, he said that he instructed Brown not to amputate McFarland’s foot while admitting that a doctor would likely agree that the procedure should be performed. The administrator also reportedly stated that he believed Brown intended to ensure McFarland’s comfort and dignity.
The documents stated that the foot was being held together by skin and two tendons. Brown told police that she “snipped” McFarland’s foot with “bandage scissors.”
According to the court documents, another nurse at the facility told police that Brown shared with her that “her family has a taxidermy shop, and she was going to preserve the foot and put it on display with a sign that said ‘Wear your boots, kids.'”
McFarland died days after Brown amputated his foot.
Brown pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of negligently abusing a patient. She agreed to pay $443 in court costs and will agree to any disciplinary actions proposed by the state’s Board of Nursing. She will not face any jail time.
