Broward General nurse possibly exposed patients to risk

More than 1,800 patients at Broward General may have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV viruses because of a nurse's misuse of tubing for five years.

BY JOHN DORSCHNER

jdorschner@MiamiHerald.com

Broward General Medical Center administrators announced Monday they are taking immediate action to investigate whether a nurse's misuse of saline bags and tubing exposed more than 1,800 cardiac patients over five years to blood-carried diseases such as hepatitis and HIV viruses.
In a news release issued late Monday, the hospital said the nurse, who was not identified, has resigned and the hospital has reported her to the Board of Nursing.

Hospital managers learned of the problem when someone reported seeing the nurse using the same saline bag and tubing more than once when giving intravenous fluids to patients undergoing chemical cardiac stress tests.

Supervisors are now determining whether the practice put patients at risk for exposure through infections carried by blood. The review is for patients handled by the nurse from January 2004 through early September 2009 -- the length of the nurse's employment at the hospital....

Hard to imagine why someone would neglect to use new supplies with each patient.
As a side note, anyone notice how they mispelled "hepatitis" throughout the article?

Oh, how I shudder.

seriously? that is just gross.
how lazy can you possibly be... it takes less than 2 minutes to open a new bag of saline and new pack of tubing, spike the bag and prime the tubing.

Makes you wonder what she possibly could have been thinking?

This is soooooo irresponsible and immoral. There is no reason for this...You would think the nurse was supplying the equipment and paying for it out of HER FUNDS...even though times are hard and supplies are short, I pray I NEVER conduct myself in this way.

Merged threads...

the worst part is that she KNEW what she was doing . She should face criminal charges.

You would think someone would have noticed that they had 1800 patients go through and had only used 200 bags of saline and 200 IV tubing. Think how a lot of pharmacies get about just saline flush counts being off! And my manager is so on top of our supply charges, it can't be that hard to catch if you want to at least. I wonder if someone did notice, and took advantage of the savings until it was officially reported and couldn't be ignored anymore.