Virginia Hospital Accidentally Kills Patient

Originally posted by oramar
About once or twice a year a MD would decide to put a medical patient on a PCA. They were very difficult to figure out when you did not use them all the time. Sure they inserviced us on them one time a few years earlier, but you have to use that stuff over and over again to be safe with it. I used to have to get a person from a unit where they used them all the time to come and help me program. It seems like these oral oxy drugs are supplanting the IV drugs. They appear to work just as well as IV and IM narcotics. Oh, yes I would like to hear more technical info about what went wrong here. Some of these reports are written by people with no medical background and they really don't get the facts straight.

Some of these reports are written by people with no medical background and they really don't get the facts straight.

This is why we double check when we set them, I was checking a PCA once and the nurse was supposed to set it for PCA of 1mg q 10min and she had done it backwards and set 10mg q 1 min, Morphine so in 5 minutes the Pt could have gotten 50mg MS oops!!!