Tennessee Hospital Performed Procedure on Wrong Baby

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A Tennessee mother is planning to sue after she says the hospital where she gave birth accidentally performed a procedure on her newborn instead of on another baby.

Jennifer Melton, 31, of Hartsville, says a doctor did a frenulectomy — an incision in the tissue that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth — on her 1-day-old son, Nate Harper, after a nurse encouraged her to put Nate in the nursery for a few hours so Melton could get some rest.

"The nurse brought our son back into the room, and she began to explain the care process for the procedure that he had done while he was away," Melton told NBC News on Wednesday. "I was like, what are you talking about? What procedure? She called it 'tongue clipping.' I had never heard of it."

Tennessee Mom Says Hospital Performed Procedure on Wrong Baby - NBC News

Specializes in Critical Care, Float Pool Nursing.
Well that is where you and infant Nate's mother differ. She has been on the warpath since the incident came to light and shows no signs of letting up. She has been on live and in the media since the story broke and clearly isn't going to let this go. Tennessee Mother Says Hospital Performed Unneeded Surgery on Her Baby : People.com

The incident is also pouring fuel on the debate about keeping infants in central nurseries at all, but rather shouldn't mini-nurseries in the mom's room be standard, period.

Wow, I read that article and at first I sympathized a little with the mom but after reading her quotations, she's clearly just a gold digger looking to profit after a mistake. She's sensationalizing the hell out of what happened, likely in order to build up emotional distress type damages... disgusting.

"I can't sleep, it's like a horrible dream come to life," Melton, 31, tells PEOPLE.

You'd think her baby got his arm chopped off by mistake or something. Jesus. By the way, look at the mother in the video. She looks like a flea-infested dung heap.

Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.

"A horrible dream come to life"?? Good g-d, talk about hyperbole!

Specializes in Critical Care, Float Pool Nursing.

Definitely. The woman is looking to get paid, nothing more. Why else would she go to PEOPLE magazine with this?

I'm not saying one plus one equal two; but that hospital seems to have some issues with quality of care.

A quick search brought up this: Patient Sues Hospital Claim Emergency Room Snafu Burned His Arm - Story

But there are more, many more to be comfortable complains from patients (sorry, clients) and this is reflected in a middling to low ratings from both CMS and elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure I'd be raising holy hell if an unnecessary and painful procedure were done on my one day old baby. The only way to make a hospital more careful or do anything at all to prevent this from happening again and again is to hit them in the pocketbook. So what if she gets money, maybe she'd donate it to something. Would it be better if she said up front Hey any financial award is going to be given to a third world pediatric surgical mission? Doesn't change the merits of the case which is that at least one if not multiple people screwed up the pre-op part of all this. Where's the checklist to make sure they had the right kid?? If the hospital is negligent they should be held accountable. and unless the mother herself stuck the baby into someone else's bassinette it seems that she didn't screw up, they did!

Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.

Gear down, trucker

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