Gabrielle Bellitti Daughter was discharged from the hospital with another patient’s colostrum

Your Name: Gabrielle Bellitti

Patient Name/Relationship: Gabrielle Bellitti/ Catalina Antonelli

City/State: Franklin/MA

When did event occur (what year)? 2023

Where did event occur? Acute Care General Hospital

What type of medical harm did you experience or witness? Other or Combination of Above. Please explain.

Please describe what happened.
When the System Becomes the Story
A reflection on patient safety, fragmented oversight, and what happens after something goes wrong

By Gabrielle Bellitti, B.A., M.S., PhD Candidate

I never intended to become someone who understood healthcare oversight systems, governance structures, or institutional fragmentation. I was a patient first. A mother. Someone trying to safely deliver her baby and recover from a difficult hospitalization experience.

What happened afterward changed me.

My daughter was discharged from the hospital with another patient’s colostrum, which was later fed to her at home before the exposure was discovered. At first, I believed the experience would be handled transparently. I thought there would be clear communication, accountability, empathy, and guidance. I assumed that if I asked reasonable questions, I would receive reasonable answers.

Instead, I entered a world that felt fragmented, opaque, and strangely difficult to navigate.

At the beginning, I was not emotional in how I communicated. I was emotional in how I was processing what I was uncovering. There is a difference. My communication remained composed, organized, and persistent. But internally, I was trying to make sense of expanding realizations that kept becoming harder to ignore.

Why was important information documented in my chart but not clearly reflected in my daughter’s? Why did timelines and explanations seem inconsistent? Why did obtaining straightforward answers feel so difficult? Why did every request for specific information seem to result in broad data dumps rather than the exact records or metadata I was asking for?

At some point, the experience stopped feeling like a misunderstanding and started feeling like I was navigating systems designed primarily to protect themselves.

That realization was deeply disorienting.

Over time, I escalated my concerns through Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Mass General Brigham leadership, the Department of Public Health, the Bureau of Health Care

What was the outcome of the medical harm issue? Extended length of hospital stay