Nurse turns off life support 'by mistake'

Rainmaker said:
...and you're not a doctor either? Is that what you meant?
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Have you ever worked with a Dr?
in their area sure they are good but single minded to a fault.
unable to comprehend such ideas as data security and protection,
ie DON'T GIVE THE DAMN BAND 2 HELPERS YOUR LOGIN DETAILS INC PASSWORDS.
there is a REASON that people have different levels of access, and when we come a knockin asking why you've been looking up the address details for every patient that has had a breast op in the last year YOU'LL KNOW WHY

anyway back on topic.
stupid nurse either lied about what she was qualified to do but the agency didn't check OR the agency KNEW that she didn't have the quals and put her in there anyway.
Sure the PCT should have checked too but tbh I'd say that the agency are MORE to blame than anyone else, either they where inept or lied about what she was able to do.

whatever happens it's not going to make the guys life better, even tho it was pretty bad to start with.
 
Rainmaker said:
...and you're not a doctor either? Is that what you meant?
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And neither are my colleagues HOWEVER all audits are overseen by Health Professionals.
We do all the pencil pushing but they make the decisions.
eg I've made all the arrangements for a Pressure Ulcer audit but only the Health Professionals will attend it and then report back to our Clinical Auditors.
The Auditors will make sure that health policies are maintained.

Our Claims Manager and our Inquest Manager are Health Professionals.
 
I have actually wanted to have a 'special word' with one or two of the carers who look after my mum. Some of the things they have said to her, though the carer may not see anything wrong with it, my mum does, I also have had a problem with.

They can be horrifically late sometimes as well. Though the time management of the company (not assigning enough staff for the amount of people that need care that night) may be at fault, it is just a fact of life that problems arise with their other clients and as such it has a knock on affect.

But it does mean they dont have enough time left in their hours to do everything they really should be doing, or my mum needs.

A supervisor that came to 'evaluate' the staff (standard thing) takes the biscuit though. She actually just walked into a neighbours house (not even the house next door) thinking it was our house. Neighbours were obviously like, GTFO. She wasnt wearing her uniform either. When she came round ours she showed a disregard for the fact my mum was on the toilet/not covered up and just walked in and sat down in the corner.

I have no sympathy for the stupid nurse or company in this situation, one or both of them needs locking up for good.
 
franco_22 said:
Doesn't take a lawyer to tell you who's vicariously liable for someone's mistake.
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Well it will won't it and what that person will be asking is would two other similar trained people in a similar situation have done the same thing and you know what they probably would not have. Yes procedures have failed etc the agency is at fault but the nurse undertook actions that were completely outside their area of knowledge and therefore was negligent and in complete breech of the nurses professional code. If the nurse went directly against advice and guidance then it would the nurse that was liable. In this case it would appear that there are several heads that should roll. Although some must have already because diploma/degree in nursing or not any muppet should know that you don't switch ventilators off unless the patient is already brain-dead unless you are daft enough to meet those criteria personally.

As for the ethnicity of the person concerned actually it does have a great bearing it is no secret in the NHS that there are trends of competence that can be attributed towards some countries training. So people can spin that into some racist or anti-racist agenda to suit their own purpose when actually what it simple means is that the qualifications given by some countries are not as equally weighted as those from others.
 
vonhelmet said:
Actually, a lawyer is almost certainly exactly what it takes.
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Not in Clinical Negligence cases.
The will get independent health professional witnesses who will read through all the notes and they make the decision, then of course it goes to the NHSLA who will also have their health professionals and between them they decide if negligence has taken place.
Sometimes the NHSLA will agree there has been a Breach Of Duty and other times it will end up in court.
The independent witnesses send in their CVs with how much they cost per hour and for a day in court :eek:
 
Freefaller said:
Too many people are ready to blame the person/people rather than understand the true root cause of the issue. I'd suggest that the problem/issue was the process which allowed an unqualified nurse to work in such an environment, or the training method isn't suitable. There has to be a process for every step in everything we do in life - a process is just a set of actions necessary to achieve the outcome desired. If those processes aren't review or controlled, you will get these problems.

Having said that, had I not been correctly trained, I would not have touched any of the buttons on equipment I didn't understand. Furthermore, in this instance the management team should have ensured they had the right person for the right job - in this case, either the training or recruitment or assignment process had broken down which led to an unsuitable person being able to do something like this.

Eitherway it's tragic, and I'm not trying to absolve the nurse or management of any culpability - what is done is done, however I'd want to ensure that the processes are reviewed, and any flaws in the processes have controls in place to ensure that this mistake doesn't happen again.
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This. Nurse is to partly blame but there are other factors as freefaller mentioned.
 
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