another nurse charged w/ manslaughter

Nurses General Nursing

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I live in Puerto Rico and I just heard on the news last night about a nurse who is being charged with manslaughter due to a medication error. I have read of several of these cases on the boards and I find this to be a very disturbing trend. Now we all know med errors are dangerous and need to be taken seriously but should one be deemed a murderer if it happens. In my opinion the answer is no. It should be dealt with by the board of regulations and punishment should be handled by them. Jail time should not be an option. I for one will stop doing patient care if this trend continues. We put our lives on the line for patients, we put our licenses on the line for patients and now the courts want to put us in jail? Not on your life will I put myself in that kind of risk. Any opinions? :cool:

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What is bugging me about those cases is that it appears that a serious mistake was made in each case by physician and/or pharmacist in addition to the nurse. In none of these cases was anyone else charged. That makes me feel very angry.

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Specializes in Hospice, Critical Care.

How 'bout we start making the docs administer the meds?! Heh. Healthcare would come to a complete crawl.

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Specializes in Community Health Nurse.

Zee RN, I like your style! ;) Let the docs do their own dirty work!

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im with you zee.

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Specializes in ORTHOPAEDICS-CERTIFIED SINCE 89.

Wonder if we should go back to the food tasters only make the docs and the pharm-ass-ists be the med tasters?

Whatever happened in the Santa Barbara case w/ the vitamin syringe? Anyone heard?

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Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.

Anybody know any info about this latest case?

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I know let those MD'S pass lot of body bags.

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Supposedly in this case the nurse was caring for a 2 month old baby in the hospital. The MD ordered 17cc of TPN to be run over 20 hours. The nurse ran the TPN at 17 cc per hour for 20 hours. Baby died.

:cool:

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Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.

OMG! How tragic:o

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Originally posted by tonchitoRN

Supposedly in this case the nurse was caring for a 2 month old baby in the hospital. The MD ordered 17cc of TPN to be run over 20 hours. The nurse ran the TPN at 17 cc per hour for 20 hours. Baby died.

:cool:

Was there more then one nurse involved with this error since there was more then one shift involved?

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Why does it seem that we nurses are fall guys for the whole system sometimes? I get so frustrated! I do like the latest trend in med error reporting--that involves looking at system problems behind the errors. The studies show that serious errors generally have failures at several levels and several depts are involved. Finally some common sense here!!

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