medical malpractice cases: what were they thinking??

[HappyNurse2005, RN]

all these recent suing threads, so i was reading med malpractice info.

read this paragraph first

On a Friday night, the decedent became restless. The facility's night nurse was advised to give him 1-10 mg ofMorphine every two hours PRN for "restlessness". By 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, the facility's night nurse had negligently administered 500 to 700 mg of Morphine in less than four hours. Follow-up investigation uncovered the possibility that the nurse might have confused "mg" and "ml."

seriously, 500mg of Morphine in 4 hours? even if she mixed up mg and ml.....500ml of morphine? it'd take 4 hours to draw up that much and give it!

see the whole case here

http://www.nso.com/case/cases_area_index.php?id=98&area=Hospital

[steelcityrn, RN]

that story sounds like bologna. How is it that they have that much morphine available in such a short period of time?

[HappyNurse2005, RN]

did you see the link? its from a nursing malpractice insurance website and had documentation from where they got the case. makes me think its not baloney.

[firstaiddave907]

wow thats a lot of morphine

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

NSO is my malpractice carrier and some of the cases they defend???!!! At any rate - in the ER we give outrageous amounts of morphine to opiod-dependent patients - its nothing to give 30 mg in 30 minutes. SOme of these folks are already on 700mg /day and this allows them to function.

This all points to knowing what is a legitimate dose based on the pts diagnosis, disease process and history.

[HappyNurse2005, RN]

Maybe that could be a legitimate amt for a known opiate abuser. Makes sense, you build up tolerance and all.

But even at 30mg in 30 min, that'd be 240mg in 4 hours, not 500 as this nurse did.

And, it was 25x the max prescribed dose.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Right again. This nurse should have read the order and asked questions PRIOR to giving that amount of morphine.

[TazziRN, RN]

NSO is my malpractice carrier and some of the cases they defend???!!! At any rate - in the ER we give outrageous amounts of morphine to opiod-dependent patients - its nothing to give 30 mg in 30 minutes. SOme of these folks are already on 700mg /day and this allows them to function.

This all points to knowing what is a legitimate dose based on the pts diagnosis, disease process and history.

:yeahthat: I'm an ER nurse too....I think the most I've given was 50-60 mg IV in about an hour to a man with a degloving injury to his hand. The most Demerol I've given was 300mg over 3 hours to an addict for a shoulder dislocation.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

The amount of 30mg in 30 minutes (10mg IVP every 10 minutes) was to an opiod-tolerant pt. Most patients would have quit breathing with that dose.