Nurse error killed baby: Coroner

November 5, 2004: Australia: Nurse error killed baby: Coroner:"A TERRIBLE and preventable mistake made by an elderly nurse caused the death of a newborn baby, a Victorian Coroner said today. Baby Jaxson Heller died after midwife Thelma Natt gave his mother the wrong drugs during labour at Nhill Hospital in western Victoria on August 18, 2002. Mrs Natt was 70 when she injected Kellie Hiscock with syntometrine instead of pain killer pethidine after picking up the wrong syringe."
http://www.nursingdiscussions.com/1702

Is this where we're heading by keeping nurses on staff that should have retired a long time ago? We'll be seeing more of this as the shortage gets worse.

Andrew Lopez, RN
http://www.4nursing.com

man, I'm not sure I could go on living if I was responsible for that. I cannot imagine how the parents must feel. I certainly think that I'd be done practicing nursing at that point. You really hate to read things like this.

Sadly, people die every day due to Nursing and Doctor mistakes. Heck, I wonder how many people die or have serious complications due to illegible doctor's handwriting alone.

former nurse manager of peds at hospital I work at gave a baby push of antibiotics mixed with KCL instead of saline. This was at least 15 years ago.. it was a doctors baby also and he was holding the baby. At that time we mixed our on KCL IV's and KCL and saline were in the medication drawers and had the same color labels.

that was just an accident waiting to happen.