Nurse turns off life support 'by mistake'

Rainmaker

Rainmaker

Rainmaker

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-11595485

Just wow. :eek::( Basically the guy was quadriplegic after a car accident and was cared for at home by a nurse. An agency nurse (who apparently lacked training) turned off his life support. The poor sod could only click his tongue in desperation to warn her what she'd done, and it took over 20 minutes for paramedics to arrive and start resus. The nurse was unable to operate the basic resus equipment (ambu-bag) to save him.

He's now severely brain damaged. Jesus. Imagine knowing what she'd done and having to lie helplessly waiting to die. :( This certainly raises concerns about the health service and training of agency and temporary workers.

I think she should be jailed tbh. I'm all for our nurses but this lady clearly shouldn't have been pressing buttons she didn't understand and has essentially cabbaged the poor fella.
 
2StepSteve said:
That is appalling.

A nurse that doesn't know how to resus.

The boss of the company that employed her needs to go to jail.
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Agreed. If the company put forward a nurse and lied about or didn't check her qualifications they must be liable and the buck stops with the directors.

If she didn't know what she was doing why was she touching the machine. The lack of urgency immediately after it was switched off only goes to highlight just how clueless she was.

To be in that poor guys position doesn't bare thinking about. It must have been terrifying.

The incident is the subject of likely litigation so the PCT is restricted in what further it may say in public."
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How about just say sorry and hand over cash.
 
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Disgusting, hopefully she is liable to be punished severely; so many failures lead to this mistake and the fact that he and the family were so anxious as to set up a camera and fire off emails requesting a change of nurse that were ignored is so upsetting.

I understand the need for protecting of health-care workers but the higher ups assuaging this as ‘working outside her level of competence’ rather than gross and willful negligence leading to severe bodily harm is distressing, she needs to be prevented from working in this capacity (as a nurse) ever again at the very least and perhaps see a jail term at the more severe end of things.

I know what I’d like to see if I were a family member and I personally want to see the same thing having been in an extremely vulnerable medical state in the past myself, but perhaps that’s too emotionally tangled.

So disconcerting that procedures were so botched that this was possible to happen, those in control need to see punishment too, negligence everywhere!!! :(
 
why was she sent and why was she operating a machine which she isn't trained to use ?
if she lied and said she was trained and knew how to operate the life support machine then she should be jailed...if not then the agency should be held responsible and face the consequences. ....wouldn't be surprised if its the nhs who end up with the blame and end up coughing up crap loads of money though.
 
Stretch said:
Agreed. If the company put forward a nurse and lied about or didn't check her qualifications they must be liable and the buck stops with the directors.
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Why does it stop with the directors ?:confused:

Surely it stops with the person who's job it is to do the hiring.


Or do you expect the board of directors of every major bank to personally check the background of every cashier to make sure they aren't likely to steal people's details?
 
Health and Safety people will go nuts about this, fines, resignations and maybe prison time for a few people will be possible.

Absolutely appalling tbh.
 
Thee was a case a while back when someone died because a cleaner unplugged his life support so they could plug a vacuum cleaner in.
 
2StepSteve said:
A nurse that doesn't know how to resus.
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I'm sure a lot of nurses don't. They just don't put themselves in sole control of life support equipment they don't understand.

kwerk said:
Who's betting the nurse was from Nigeria or Romania or some place.
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What's that got to do with anything? Doesn't take a foreigner to breed incompetence of this degree. In fact, it's more likely they weren't foreign.

Nurse has been suspended (rightly so) pending investigation. Innocent until proven and all that, but at the very least the nurse needs to be barred from ever nursing again (it clearly wasn't a one-off incident so that rules out accidental cause). Then the managers need to be fined/jailed for not acting on the problems sooner.
 
I can't even begin to imagine the shock seeing someone unplug my life support machine *touch wood it never happens*. What a horrid thing to go through.

Although I say this now and can't possibly imagine my state of mind should I ever be in a similar situation, I don't know if I'd want to be alive and paralysed. :(

That whole story is so tragic :( I can't believe that the nurse looking after him was so inept - it really is quite frightening that something like this can happen.

Poor bugger :(
 
The funny thing is (or not so funny thing) is that in cases like these, where there is negligence and a claim is made, you claim for

1 - personal injury (general damages)

This is pretty straight forward and there is a bracket for amount awarded by the Judicial Studies Board.

2 special damages

This is like material things, things that can be quantified. Things like a damaged car in a car accident, things like a new bungalow because now you can't walk and in a wheelchair from the accident.

This is where it gets "interesting", special damages is also where the heading of Care and Assistances comes in. The cost of care is calculated here, and experts of doctors such as orthopaedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, care experts, etc makes their report on what kind of care is needed, what level of care is needed, and what is the life expectancy is for the claimant. This sum claimed is not paid out like a lump sum and turn into a windfall to the claimant, not unless he is an outpatient. The amount can also be set as a periodical payment, where a set amount is given out for the rest of his life to take care of him.

The "problem" for the claimant here is that he is already in care, so how much "extra" care is he likely needed? The injury he has before he couldn't take care of himself before and in terms of physical care such as bathing, cooking, feeding it remains unchanged. In terms of damages for his injuries, I.e. General damages are usually a SMALL part of claims like these. It is the care and assistance that turn a claim from £100,000 into multi million, as if you take into account of the cost of a nurse, 3 shifts a day, 365 days a year, just for the sake of argument at £25k per annum per nurse, you are looking at £75,000 per year then multiply by the number of years, look in the OGDEN Table for the multiplier too and you will get your number and the number will be in the millions.

So the tricky point here is that since the care and assistance claim isn't so much as paid to the claimant but to his carers...the amount claimed here will be or argued that it is not as much or anywherer near compared go what a claimant would have gotten if he was healthy in the first place. On that logic, i cant see him getting more than a few hundred thousands.

:(
 
I'm wondering why simply pressing a button was enough to turn off a critical piece of equipment :eek:
Hospital equipment by it's nature will require more than a layman's understanding, but I've never seen one that wasn't a baffling array of cryptically labelled buttons.

Poor bloke, if I were him I'd want someone to slip me a bottle of pills
 
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