Girl (19-month-old) dies after medication error (fought through 15 surgical procedures)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20100530/NEWS01/705319943/0#girl-dies-after-medication-error

By Juan Perez Jr.
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Alicia Coleman was born relatively healthy, her mother said, even though she was three months’ premature and weighed little more than 2 pounds at birth.

Things grew worse when Alicia came down with a bowel infection at 12 days old. The infection quickly spread through her intestinal tract and wreaked havoc on her tiny body.

Alicia’s doctors initially gave her a 5 percent chance of survival, said her mother, Dominique Coleman.

Yet Alicia fought through 15 surgical procedures and the battery of medications that marked the first year of her life. She improved to the point where doctors wanted to wean her off her medications. She was learning how to walk.

“We were very optimistic,” said Coleman, 26, of Omaha.

The 19-month-old child suddenly died Saturday while in the care of Children’s Home Healthcare’s World, a pediatric care center at 7815 Farnam Drive.

Coleman and hospital authorities said medical staff erroneously injected some of Alicia’s medication into a catheter connected to her jugular vein.

FULL story at link.

[begin_within]

1. I think the human race should no longer be unsupervised and in charge of itself.

[cutlassmama]

6. +1000

[LeftyMom]

2. That poor woman. For those who didn't click the link, she had two stillbirths before this child.

I can't even imagine.

[tblue]

3. Oh no!!!!!

Oh, so sad! :cry:

[liberalhistorian]

4. I hope they are made to pay dearly for such

egregriously inexcusable, horrendous negligence. And these things happen far more than we'd like to think, too. My best friend of nearly 30 years was killed by doctors last year. She'd fought a seven-year battle with cancer and WON. Several years later, she went for a comprehensive blood test, known as a bone biopsy, as part of her routine checkups. The dipshit resident did it in the wrong place, causing an arterial bleed, and no one, including the attending physicians, did anything about it for many hours, despite my friend's continual complaints that something was wrong.

The bleed caused horrendous internal damage to many organs, she was hospitalized for months straight, in rehab for more months, in and out of the hospital, with great physical suffering, until she finally succumbed nearly a year afterwards. I am still so unbelievably angry at such a senseless, inexcusable negligence that I can hardly see straight whenever I think about it. And don't even mention the words "tort reform" to me, EVER.

[Scuba]

7. Yet hospitals are trying to further cut nursing staff...

...in an effort to have any retained earnings for future services, equipment, etc.

While Republicans cry that tort reform is needed, they also defend the insurance companies that take 30% of our healthcare dollars for ADDING NO VALUE TO THE PROCESS.

Ultimately, some low ranking RN will be blamed for this despite his/her best efforts to manage an ever-increasing patient load.

[liberalhistorian]

12. True enough. There are some that are even trying

to destroy nurses' unions or forbid their forming altogether; hence, the drive to hire foreign nurses under the guise of not being able to find "qualified" American nurses.

And whenever nurses try to sound the alarm about staff reductions and vastly increased workload and the dangers it poses, they're publicly derided as greedy and selfish.

[elias7]

10. So sorry for your loss...

What did she ultimately die of?

[liberalhistorian]

11. Kidney failure brought on by the

damage caused by hours of arterial blood leaking into her system.

[BlueIris]

5. Awful. nt

[JCMach1]

8. My neice who was on a heart/lung bypass machine, ECMO, for nearly 2months

after open heart surgery had to fight off a syphilis infection from tainted blood she received.

She lived through the horrible experience, but with profound disability and brain damage.

Anyone who works in medicine can give us any number of horror stories. The only thing unusual in this case is it made it into the press.

[Berry Cool]

9. This is just awful.

These poor parents are going to get millions of dollars in judgment from the pediatric center, but it'll never make up for their lost child.

And yes, it's highly likely that the medication error occurred because somebody was overworked and tired...and will now never forgive himself or herself for this horrible mistake.