Medication administration error at long-term facility the cause of elderly woman’s death.
Reblogged from: http://www.NSO.com
An elderly woman living in a long-term care facility passes away; autopsy reveals the cause of death to be an overdose of morphine. Indemnity Settlement Payment: In excess of $390,000.
Following a recent hospitalization for complications of metastatic ovarian cancer, an elderly female with a long history of bipolar disorder was discharged to a long-term care aging service facility due to her family’s inability to care for her at home. Throughout her stay, her family made several complaints to administration regarding the care the resident was receiving and requested the resident be transferred to another facility on numerous occasions.
The LPN, an agency nurse, on duty the evening of the incident had worked at the facility on several occasions and was aware of the facility’s policies and procedures on medication administration. During the scheduled evening medication administration round, the nurse was in the resident’s room when she became distracted by a resident from another room requesting assistance.
When the nurse returned to the room, she gave the resident her nightly medications. The resident questioned the number of pills the nurse was giving her and stated that she had never taken “purple pills” before. The nurse assured the resident the medication was correct and continued with the medication administration.
An hour later, a certified nursing assistant notified the nurse that one of her residents was unresponsive. The LPN responded to the resident’s room and found her with a thready pulse and shallow respirations. The facility called 911, and when the paramedics arrived they administered Narcan® intravenously, which instantly
revived the resident.
On the way to the hospital, the resident told the paramedics that the nurse gave her four “purple pills” earlier that evening; and after she took them, she immediately fell asleep. On admission into the hospital, the patient became responsive when receiving Narcan®, but as soon as the medication wore off, the resident would suffer from shallow respirations and would be unresponsive.
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