Dozens of Mistakes Caused Death of Young Hospital Patient, Court Rules
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- Опубліковано 5 тра 2022
- Documents obtained by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit show medical staff at UCSF nearly quadrupled a young patient’s opioid medication and then failed to monitor him with a pulse oximeter, a simple medical device that would have alerted them if his blood oxygen level fell to a dangerously low level. Jessica Aguirre reports.
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I'm a nurse in Canada
This happens alot more than you would like to think. The only difference with this case is that it got investigated. Many don't.
A cardiologist wanted me to take 5 medications just because the treadmill stress test assistant got me angry and my blood pressure went up . Later I found more of his patients had same experience. Time to tell OHIP fire incompetent doctors. Doctors ,glorified drug pushers all of them
And that’s a fact!!!
So sad
I'm a RN in Canada and I was overdosed during a radiology interventional procedure. They gave me NARCAN. The doctor chuckled, said welcome back we overdosed you, Sorry. I know how it happened because the system is set up for failure. But I couldn't find one person interested in patient safety to take a report in that hospital. Disgusting.
I’ve see a RN lie about one of residence (age care) he passed in the middle of the night 🤦🏻♀️ was only meant to be in respite for a couple of weeks while recovering 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ he passed the first night because he was never checked on overnight his room was freezing we were in the middle of winter. I got really pissed off when I saw the RN close his window and turn on heater to warm him and his room. I was a (personal caregiver) when I found him and there was no way in hell they were going to believe me 🤬🤬I’ve seen it more than once
$250,000 or 2M - regardless of the amount it will NEVER amount to the pain this family has the endure from the poor care this family received while their son was UCSF care. Their son was overdosed, their son was not monitored, their son was KILLED. And the fact that UCSF still after expert witnesses and medical charting doesn’t want to admit fault - is just despicable and disgusting. I feel for this family in an immense way. I pray they heal and Shame on you UCSF for not accepting accountability for your wrongdoings.
And they had the strength to keep looking. Look how long it took. Medical malpractice is expensive, and it happens, more than most people think. We all have to do better. But to take so long to get the records, oh, oh, oh. I'm glad they did, because this should NOT have happened. It is criminal what was done.......
He should have a REAL doctor treat him, not some nurse practitioner who can’t even tell when a patient is having adverse reactions to a drug.
Not too smart to have a remote control for drugs that is the staff job not the patients! Any patient can also fall asleep turn and press the button by accident. I’m still in shock about that remote control there for drugs. The only remote control that should be there is the help one
@@lexismith8206 doctors are never around. Nurses do all the leg work and report to one doctor as if they were a shift supervisor
@@onewotldgovernmentonlywhen9044 they PCAs have a lock out function so that it only allows so much medication within a certain time frame. If you press the button more frequently, nothing happens. PCAs are very safe, it was the dose of Dilaudid that was the issue.
My father had open heart surgery and was not monitored correctly or given ANY PAIN MEDS, he did not want to be a bother and told me to say nothing. I was not having it. Look after your family when they are hospitalized and speak up. This is so tragic.
My mum had a major reconstruction done and was refused pain meds as well. I wonder whats up with that.
@@derpidot it seems very cruel. Some people legitimately need pain meds
Because pain meds are dangerous to give
@@juliesmith9949 they can be, you know they are non-narcotic pain meds. Also, if used short termed and closely monitored while hospitalized, habit forming pain meds can and should be given. Picture having your chess cut open and your heart valves repaired. You are going to be in massive pain and short term use of pain meds is aceptable. I had my gallbladder removed before the opioid epidemic and was given good pain meds, about two days post discharge I had no need for them. rest. My body had started to heal.
@@FreedomofSpeech865 as an RN I’m responsible for giving pain medications as ordered. I take med administration very seriously.
From cardiac to orthopedic , transplant to mastectomies, it’s serious business, not wish fulfillment.
My father had a heart attack last month, had to get a stat procedure done in cath lab where he had a stent placed and thrombectomy for 99% occlusion of one of his coronary arteries. I went to visit him in recovery and he was on NO monitoring and also on a nitroglycerin drip for residual chest pain (which also decreases blood pressure). Luckily I’m an icu RN and when I asked the nurse caring for him why isn’t on monitoring she claimed “oh he doesn’t have to be”. I went straight to the charge nurse with my concerns and requested that they take his vitals and keep him on monitoring until he is in the pcu (he’d been waiting hours for a room and had to wait in recovery). When they took his vitals his blood pressure was already dipping below therapeutic. Imagine that someone has a heart attack and the incompetent thinking of some healthcare staff is that they don’t need any sort of vital sign monitoring (no ekg, no oxygen sats, no bp). And I say this as a nurse, sometimes the critical thinking in some facilities can be pathetic.
that is the problem, there is NO critical thinking for many of them. i have stories for sure, sure you do also. its alarming.
How the fuck was he not monitored when receiving a vasodilators..,..?!!?!???!?!?!?!?! I can't not believe it .. those. Farmaceuticals have to be administered with stric monitorization
Thank goodness you were his advocate! I have had to step in for family members and advocate as well.
Unbelievable. Makes you question what education and clinical training they've had
Horrible.
How much of these errors were caused by uderstaffing because hospital admin wants to line their own pockets with money instead of hiring more nurses?
Absolutely on point!!!!
yes!
Also, the insurance companies who are just as bad, if nit worse!
Someone with a lick of sense here!
probably half of them. honestly need to sue more individual nurses. As much as it hurts my heart for the nurses. They need to quit if they cant do the job being placed upon them.
What a tragic story. Ugh, can you imagine the guilt his sister feels?!! My brother donated a kidney to me ( University of Maryland in 2016), and I would feel like it was my fault if something had happened to him during his recovery.
I worked for them !!
How are you doing ?
@@Justforme7 Better than ever! 5 years post-op kidney transplant, 3 years post-op pancreas transplant. Univ. of Md. did an amazing job. Thanks for asking! 🥰🙂🙂🙂
@@tinaa2677 I gave my mom a kidney in 2006! Glad you’re doing well! God bless!
@@rjules1083 So grateful for people like you!! ❤️
This is one reason why I'm scared to have any operations . One minute you're good, next my son is an orphan. It's too scary to even contemplate
This is why I'm terrified any time I go to the hospital. I'm always questioning the nurse about what she's putting in my IV and how much and if it's going to interact with any of my current meds. I'm an absolute nightmare of a patient. I value my life too much.
No your not, I always welcome questions from patients and tell them they are their own best advocate and no nurse should ever be put off by that.
@@peony70 well you’re doing a good job then, but 90% of nurses I’ve encountered become all defensive and label you as difficult.
I don’t think it’s bad to want to live. I think it’s bad that you should have to ask!
@@jessH090 yup.
@@Ad-Lo exactly! We as patients should not have to ask what meds are being pushed. The nurses should let us know before hand incase the patient is allergic to the meds but it isnt down in the charts yet. There is a lot of things that can go wrong with meds. Like for myself i have an adverse reaction to Promethazine. It doesnt make me tired it makes me wired. Like i will get up n take off down the hall the second it hits and i wont be able to sit. Benadryl eliminates most of that feeling if given before the promethazine. One time i told a nurse i couldnt have promethazine unless i get Benadryl beforehand cuz of how it makes me act. I think she thought i was BS'n cuz she didnt give me Benadryl. She pushed regular saline and acted as if it was Benadryl and i litetally jumped out of the bed n took off n had the worst feeling of despair ive had in my life. Now i dont know if the nurse did that or the doctor had told the nurse to not do the Benadryl first to see how i would react to the meds but that was not fun. Because when the nurse fake pushed the Benadryl the doctor was standing in the room. Now from my experiences with emergency rooms the doctor doesnt stand bedside when the nurse gives meds. So idk but it was traumatizing.
When I was in rehab at 16 a nurse gave me 3x the dose of my anxiety medication I needed, about 8 hours to early and I passed out in the hallway. When I came to the nurse was yelling at me for accepting the medication when I didn't know what any of it was and saying "I know your kind, you need attention".. Then later on that day she gave me a sob story of how her husband died last year and to please forgive her. Some people need to lose their jobs and honestly I really should have formally reported her
Wtf. Ppl are narcissist weirdos
I'm sorry for the loss of your son. Folks, medical malpractice is real and it happens more often than you think. Strive for better pay, better work ethic and environment.
How about strive for a culture of integrity and accountability.
@@yl7495 Do enough people even know what that means?
This world gets crazier by the day!
@@pennycaldwell8141 Corporate hospitals sure have no interest in neither integrity nor accountability. They two things they go for: profit and coverup.
@Bali Breeze this is terrible, OMG, so sorry to know this happened.
Wow docs kill.... no wonder 1m ppl died
Not to mention he had had another powerful pain killer before Dilaudid.
5 hours unmonitored, no oxygen alarm.
I sorry for the sister and Mother.
Yep, to give fentanyl and then dilaudid to a patient who also had anesthetics in his system and only one kidney to flush all that out
@@Envlo insanity.
Yes. And they didn't give any Narcan which would've saved his life!!!!
When my grandmother was hospitalized, our saving grace was my brother's wife, a registered dietician with basic medical knowledge. She routinely called out a variety of errors on the part of my grandmother's medical team (including not reattaching her nutrient bag and leaving her without nutrients for 24 hours while on life support) and this was before the pandemic. When my grandmother needed help, it regularly took 45 minutes to be seen by the respiratory therapist or nurse. It's profitable to have minimal staff and this is the level of care it leads to. I indirectly know two people who were killed by medical errors in hospitals. We need an overhaul of our medical system.
I'm suspicious of the growing "team" approach. They seem to throw in large numbers of staff, rotating in and out while never giving a straight answer. We had this after a car accident and a couple simple fractures... they assigned expensive specialists to a huge team, none would answer questions and no doctor seemed to be in charge of care. Worked out in the end, but very frustrating (and painful) to deal with. Some nice big out of network bills too, for docs who did mostly nothing. I appreciate that complex cases need specialists, but it also seems like a mechanism to increase huge costs while lowering accountability.
@@eh3477 its also frustrating for hospital staff. I am an MRI technologist, and when I question an exam, I get the routine, "I was only on consult, that was not my patient".
@@anniesshenanigans3815 Thanks. Appreciate your inside perspective. I'm guessing it's more due to bad top-heavy administration and management than bad staff. But we only see the staff, and they still gouge us all financially.
I've worked for agencies too, and whenever they assigned a new "team management" scenario to something, projects took twice as long and cost 5x as much. The usual suspects escaped accountability, and anyone who actually was conscientious spent 50% of their time chasing people around for missing info,, rather having time for productive work.
Yes, there is a need for an overhaul
Also skilled nursing facilities where they staff up to 40 PATIENTS to one nurse.
Hospital staffing has run off most experienced floor nurses that would catch this kind of thing. You can’t make enough policies to replace expert level nurses. Most hospital nurses have 1-3 years only.
And it is NOT just on is Nurses to catch all of these things! We are responsible for so many patients we can’t catch everything!!! We work as a team, everyone is accountable!
That and now more inexperienced nurses are trying to run away from horrible working conditions of bedside and become NPs with little floor or life experience; this is a matter of patient safety but universities and medical organizations only see profit. Imo, a NP is not a doctor substitute. Healthcare field is so messed up; hires NPs as cheap labor and expect them to do same type of work as a doctor. No offense to NPs but I've heard from my clients on multiple occasions NPs prescribed them medications that actually made them worse off based on their other medical conditions. One of my client's son, who is studying to be a nurse, caught one red handed in an outpatient setting and luckily the pharmacist agreed and had to call the doctor office to tell them they're nuts. Even he as a nursing student is now biased and refuses to allow an NP to see his parents. I'm a nurse myself and I do not trust NPs. The training and the licensure is just not the same as an actual doctor.
@@TheTruthHurts6666 yep, bedside is ridiculous, demands for all of the required duties is ridiculous, lack of good techs is ridiculous, everything is ridiculous.
Touche
I’m a nurse and I can’t understand why another nurse wouldn’t monitor the patient!! 😡😡 Just
last week I had a patient come up from the ER. Her vitals were stable when she got to our floor. I read in her chart that she was a diabetic and saw fried chicken in the room when I entered. The ER failed to tell me that they also found her to be hypoglycemic. Patient told me they gave her food but I didn’t see where they rechecked her blood sugar after giving food. I did see that they gave her IV glucose. I check her blood sugar and it’s 749! 😔
Moral of the story, ASSESS YOUR PATIENTS!
I thought that $2 million wasn’t enough, and then when they decreased it to $250,000… I’m speechless and heartbroken for this family. 💔😞
Remember the lady that got burned by hot coffee at McD’s? She got 3 million
Regarding McDonald's comment @Laura Gwillim The photos of the elderly woman's burns were very horrendous. She should have received more than 3 million. Her quality of life changed and she died within a couple of years I think. There's a documentary about her story.
@@soupnfresh yes, imagine having your genitals disfigured...and the pain, oh God, the pain...
@@lauragwillim1055 No, she didn’t. The jury awarded her $2.7 in punitive damages, but the judge decreased it to $480,000, an amount that wouldn’t have been very punitive to a huge corporation like McDonald’s. Then, in order to avoid a long appeals process, they made her an offer behind closed doors that she accepted, but she wasn’t allowed to talk about the case or the award. She wasn’t able to defend herself against what was being said about herself or the case because of that.
@@lauragwillim1055 Don't talk about things you know nothing about.
Hindsight is 20/20. No one really knows what goes on in a hospital until you work there. Policy doesn’t mean crap in real life. I begged to have more staffing as a nurse but never got answers. This was before Covid. Alarms are constantly going off on the floor. Most nurses work our butts off and DO NOT intentionally neglect anyone. We need help not insults!!!!
However my heart goes out to this family especially his sister. May God bring them healing and comfort.
I’ve had so many encounters with rude/negligent nurses many do it for the money not because they actually care
How can you give opioids and not monitor oxygen or know the signs of opioid overdose? These are basic healthcare concepts. NP needs to lose her license.
@@user-kr2ty9vk5n I dont disagree with what you're saying, however people are going to attribute the malpractice of this one APRN (Nurse practitioner) onto all nurses and that's not right.
@@user-kr2ty9vk5n I agree but more than likely theres an element of understaffing this case; the reason why he may not have been monitored for 5 hours is because their weren’t enough nurses to monitor all the patients within that time frame. I wouldn’t be surprised as their have been other cases that involve understaffing as a common feature.
@@harpergrace5846 What money, lol.
My mother got her transplant at this hospital and we had no issues. I feel like this man’s team completely dropped the ball. I was under the impression UCSF was the best of the best. Apparently I was wrong. But they did treat my mother pretty well in 2010 when we were there. I just wish this man received the same awesome treatment my mother received.
I hope all involved loose their medical license like the POS they are
That was 2010...
@@rhondaschaaf4617 you can read, good!
2010??! Take a seat. I was there last week it’s a shit hole
You all seem upset that not everyone had a bad experience.that’s weird
I remember after my last c- section I was put in a utility closet because the hospital didn’t have anymore recovery room space and no one checked me for hours. Fortunately I was fine because my then husband who also is a nurse , took care of me. There are so many things that can and do go wrong! Poor guy and sorry to his lovely family for their loss🙏🏻
As a medical doctor myself I HATE the hospital as a patient and I” paranoidly” go over every patient I see. I’m the doctor who does too much.
When I was having my baby with so much prayers and GOD, my Husband also a doctor with over 10 years of experience (he used to be a paediatric resident but later went on to do family medicine) NEVER left my side. I pray everyday never to be admitted to hospital.
I pray for healing for this family
What does god have to do with anything?
Damn! This is absurd. In the 20th century, a pulse ox machine is not used after a major surgery. Bravo to his medical team.
My father went in for a stroke at John Muir hospital months ago and it took them 6 hours to begin operating on him.
They gave us excuses like, “the mri machines had a failure.”
After 6 hours, they introduced us to the surgeon after the sun had come up.
He had multiple complications throughout his stay, but thankfully he is doing better.
Seems like California is covering up the steep decline of quality of care.
I'm glad that your father is doing better.
@crimdor same thing happened to my dad many years ago. He was transferred to a second hospital and died that night surgeon said it had been too many hours of a delay
My father with covid was rejected in ER for addmission as hospital didn't had monitoring bed available. This was in India.
Short staffed?
I've been a nurse for 15 years and they all are! I just participated in the million nurse march but we also need support from families to start marching with us and putting pressure on congress and these insurance companies to start making safe staffing and priority!
All healthcare professionals out here, WE need to hold the line and always stay vigilant! Think about the orders you are carrying out or giving! We need to advocate for our patients! These are horrifying mistakes.
Also advocate and fight for better working conditions for RNs! One nurse shouldn't have 20+ patients under her care simultaneously while working 24+ hours shifts straight!
Sometimes they aren't actually mistakes, but reckless endangerment neglect and abuse, and some people should be going to prison for them!!! This is hardly rare but rather extremely common. They are just mostly are treated as above the law when caring for patients with less family support, -much like the police actually but at this point probably even more so...
But occasionally they mess up with who they victimize. But it's still usually just a fine and very seldom a prison term like in should be in more then a few of these casses!!!
@@_Just_Another_Guyabsolutely agree. Understaffing is also a huge issue!
These mistakes could also be prevented by providing adequate training for staff and adequate staffing instead of making cutbacks on staffing while hospital administrators continue to make millions.
They do the same thing in schools and daycare centers understaff $$$$
This is heartbreaking. He's an amazing brother. Sending love to his family. 🙏
How horrifying! His poor sister must carry such unwarranted guilt.
A few months ago, my buddy's relative went to the emergency room for gout pain and died the next day. They're now being investigated for malpractice and are being sued by the family.
When I was rotating through nursing school clinicals, I encountered a home health nurse who told me her experience being an ER nurse. She told me she hated being in the hospital. The reason was that she found many patients entered the hospital system and never left it. She was traumatized from it and refuses to ever work at a hospital again.
Oh nooo. I can’t imagine the pain his sister feels knowing that him saving her resulted in losing him 😣
I had surgery at UCSF last month. Post surgery, they pump me with so much Fentanyl that I was hallucinating. They gave me a button to press every time I was in pain. Initially, they started with Demerol. It didn’t help with my pain. So, they switched to Dilaudid. It wasn’t helping. I told the nurse, don’t give it to me cause it’s not working. They continuously came in every 4 hours and put it on I.v. I told them… please don’t. Then, they finally switched to oxycodone. Which finally helped with my pain. But, the fact they kept pushing the Fentanyl was crazy. I was hooked on this patch on my back. And I’m supposed to push this button every 15 minutes. That’s too much. I thought I was going to die. Cause I was going crazy with weird nightmares and hallucinations.
can you tell me more about your hallucinations. my dad was given fentanyl untill his organs started failing I wish I knew better .
I’m sorry that happened to you. Sounds terrifying.
Nurse practitioner shouldn’t be making those decisions !!!!!! And I have NP’s in my family !!!! Medical system is soooo pathetic !!!!
Exactly! He needs a REAL doctor, not some random NP with a masters degree. Tell that NP to work in an urgent clinic instead.
@@lexismith8206 some doctors are dumb as hell don’t think about title and credentials it’s the person and how smart they are
Any narcotic prescribed by a NP is supposed to be reviewed and approved by a supervising MD.
We’re always taught in nursing school to regularly check the respiration’s of a patient on narcotics. As a matter of fact if their respiration’s are under 12 breaths per min don’t even give it! This is taught in nursing 1. This is why if your tired, or not 100% in good mental or physical circumstances I would not even clock in. I’m a nurse and mistakes like this happens a lot when nurses are burnt out or the facility is understaffed. Smh I rather lose my job then kill a patient due to errors caused by these things.
When you "don't clock in" you increase the work load on the other staff and endanger the patients. I never feel 100% working 13-15hrs without a break. I've been in health care for 30+ years and our work load, the complexity of our patients have made every floor like a step down unit. Most of our patients are obese or morbidly obese and labor intensive. Nurses and CNAs don't show up for work a lot. Doctors write PAGES of orders that we are responsible for validating. I am NOT an MD. Working through covid has left us all with PTSD and the administrations treat us like crap.
Why did the NP write that order and how did pharmacy approve that dose? Why isn’t a patient on opioids and a PCA pump having their respirations and O2 monitored?
This hits home for me because my grandma died in a hospital last month of “complications” of a fall. she only had surgery on her spine to fix a problem with a piece of her lower spine but then she went into an unrousable sleep-like state for months. Then her respirations and HR declined to 0 (why?) and passed. What the heck? People don’t just become somnolent after surgery and then die months later. No diagnosis, and no cause of death determined. Two points where they had the chance to identify the problem, and they didn’t
Yeah they aren’t really giving pain meds anymore they just let people suffer in agony.
I have been laughed at by other nurses for actually standing at my patient's bedside counting respirations. Most nurses don't.
@@invalidname.pleasetryagain122 sometimes an overdose of medications causes an unrousable sleep-like state/coma when in a medical setting, amongst other possibilities.
This is sad. Im sorry for the family.
I work in a hospital and its frustrating sometimes that the floor I work on doesnt even have “enough working “ pulse oximeters for all the patients. What kind of care can we provide? Just a side note, can hospitals do better please ?!
Care is constantly delayed because nurses are having to share equipment. If a piece of equipment is constantly used, it would make sense for the hospital to buy more. But monetary greed is their game
We don’t leave each other alone in the hospital. One example of why, I was with my daughter when she was hospitalized and rather out of it. A nurse came in and was about to give her a spinal injection of some kind. That was the first I’d heard of it and it didn’t match why she was hospitalized so of course I refused and told the nurse I believed she was in the wrong room. I have other examples of things my family experienced. Also - just research the current stats on hospital deaths attributed to malpractice and negligence. And that’s just the number that’s been discovered. And, after childbirth my husband always slept in a chair next to my bed every night I was there. During the day he’d stay most of the time but we felt a bit safer during the daytime. That’s when he’d go home to shower,etc.
nurses dont do spinal injections
Nurses cannot give "spinal injections" so your story isn't adding up.
@@nocreativenameideas668 right that's probably why she stopped her
As a nurse if I have a pt on opioid medications especially a pca pump I always make sure I am monitoring their vitals especially their o2 sats. I tell my pts if they do not comply with the monitoring then I will not administer those medications. It is usually up to either the provider to put in the order to monitor or it can be the nurses discretion.
How terribly sad!!
As a former RN, I am not at all surprised that this young man died.
I trained and worked at a teaching hospital and the mistakes I saw were appalling. And covered up.
Between that and the bullying of my nurse colleagues, I left nursing forever.
And I am highly suspicious of all Doctors and nurses, sad to say.
And many times, with my children, we were assigned Specialists - many not very competent and one who put one of my son’s life in jeopardy. Terrifying.
Complained later to the Medical Body of which he was a member.
He simply lied about everything and - case closed. Still practicing in the same Specialty. 🥺
I was in the hospital for a day and what I experienced made me scared of the lack of critical thinking that happened during my stay. I'm not going to do it again if I can find another alternative.
Yep. Very smart thinking. A 2016 study out of Johns Hopkins found medical errors to be the 3rd leading cause of death (other studies have found similar). Hospitals often are not the healthy, healing place people think they are.
Sad, I've been a nurse for 20 years and I now work for a private practice but I feel the same way! I've had to advocate for my older family members hospitalized.
What's the alternative then?
I have experienced the same thing, and it was terrifying how powerless I was to do anything about it.
@@penyarol83 exactly, but people get mad when you don’t treat medical professionals like they’re God. They’re still human and don’t know it all.
I had open heart surgery last year after going to the ER with chest pain. Because of Covid, no one was allowed in with me, so I had no advocate. I have no memory of anything that happened after I arrived in the ER until a couple days after the surgery when I came to in the ICU. They tell me I consented to an angiogram and the surgery itself, but I have no memory of speaking to any doctors or being advised about the heart surgery. Luckily, my care was excellent, and I have recovered very well. Patients are helpless in these conditions. We are at the mercy of health care providers. It's frightening to think what can happen when we are so vulnerable.
This is horrific. I feel so sorry for this family. Condolences.
It's one thing to accidentally kill someone but to cover it up? Why?
How are the nurses or doctors that malpracticed paying for this? Why aren’t their names revealed? This is horrible. I wish best for the family.
Doctors are protected, and the nurses are just following the doctors orders. Plus the hospital is too cheap to have enough nurses for the number of patients they have to care for.
@@anniesshenanigans3815 a real doctor would have never make this mistake. The nurse practitioner that treated him is a complete idiot. He needs a real doctor, not some random NP with a masters degree.
@@anniesshenanigans3815 in this case its not the DR who prescribed the meds its NP nurse practitioner
Hospitals protects these medical professionals and they are never held accountable for harming patients
my father was at our local medical center and was supposed to get discharged the next day. that night at approximately midnight we were called and told he had died.
he had a pre existing heart condition but was on medication in the hospital and from what we observed was stable. the official story was that a nurse stepped from the room to allow him to go to the bathroom and she suddenly heard a crash. he had fallen to the ground and apparently after them calling code and attempting to resuscitate him they called us to inform of his death.
it was extremely unexpected and sudden and his death has adversely impacted my families life and socioeconomic status. and we were just told "sorry" and no autopsy was performed as the doctor on call just attributed his death to "a heart attack" from his preexisting congestive heart failure. i wonder if there was more to this story then what we were told and if there was more that could have been done to prevent his death
Many medication errors can be avoided if hospitals and any health facility kept safe nurse to patient ratio.
for a considered first world country, we're unfortunately very incompetent in many industries
Yeah and the US medical industrial complex is a huge part of the economy.
The incompetence is just staggering mind-boggling!
I almost died after surgery,I couldn't breathe or swallow,I'm freaking out and the post-op nurse could care less until the anesthesiologist walked in and yelled at her what are you doing can't you see if you can't breathe and didn't give me my pain medication either so I had to have a visit with the hospital administrator and Dad for my second surgery I told him don't let that woman anywhere near me and guess who is in post-op after my second surgery so God only knows what they did to me! And the abuse I got treated by the nurses was horrible because I told on one of theirs!!
Similar thing happened to me. I got treated like a drug addict because I was on a pain patch. When my gallbladder started giving me horrible pain I went to the e.r. in an ambulance cause I couldn't even stand up due to pain. They sent me home saying I was "possibly seeking narcotics". Next day, my gallbladder burst and I had emergency surgery.. the nurse I had for 80% of my hospital stay ignored me, refused to give me pain meds when they were due and lied about the doctor ordering Xanax for my anxiety. (I had a 12 hour anxiety attacks that prevented me from laying down and all I could do was pace. (I was only supposed to be up to go to the bathroom then back to bed) the nurse said doctor never called her back when she requested Xanax. Come to find out after twelve hours of hell, that the doctor ordered Xanax 30 min after requested by her but she hid it. The next nurse found it.
This is why you don't replace physicians (MDs and DOs) with nurse practitioners. A scary trend happening everywhere in hospitals
Again, his entire medical team failed him. From the NP to the pharmacist who approved the order. If it was given stat that’s different but he had a button sooo 🙄
Nonsense
@@juliesmith9949nonsense? An NP isn't as qualified as a physician.
I know at least 3 families who lost a family member due to malpractice here in CA. They send you a check and keep on killing
It's rampant across the nation. OVER 100,000 people are killed EVERY YEAR from medical mistakes. And those are just the ones reported to the government....Lord only knows how many have been swept under the rug.
God bless this family, the hospital’s incompetence and indifference makes this so much harder and horrible for the family.
In the state of California if a patient is hooked up to a PCA pump (self administering pain pump) by law they HAVE to be on a pulse-ox monitor. Anyone doing direct patient care in California knows this and this was so much more than an oversight.
Here in UK no matter what the surgery we wear a oxometer as standard and closely monitored every half hour,blood pressure,temp pulse by a nurse,
God bless them all. May she live with purpose enough for both.
I’m so so sorry this happened to him. Bless his family and his mom.
Too many mistakes are being made and covered up. I've had some incidents in my family that negatively affected my loved ones, but it's almost impossible to prove their mistakes. I'm glad here they did, and gives me hope that something changes to offer the best possible care to patients.
Thank you for sharing your story. We have to monitor our loved ones in the hospital. So sorry for your loss of an heroic son.
That is true but if you have no medical background, you are at a loss to know if the prescribed treatment is correct or not. And god help the person that has no family to sit with them.
I can’t help to wonder how many ppl passed away this way, the family believing what the hospital tells them, that the patient died because of a “genetic heart disease.” And never find that it was due to mistakes and negligence from the hospital.
$250,000? Wow, a mere smack on the wrist. California is the place to live.
I’ve only ever had one dose of Dilaudid. And the effects that resulted was the worst medication side effects I’ve ever experienced. The headache was unbearable, nausea, vertigo, every noise and sliver of light was like an ice pick in my brain. It was right after a surgery to repair the 7 abdominal hernias along my C-section wound that I was left with after being infected with a flesh eating bacteria during my C-section. If one dose did that to me, I can’t imagine having that much Dilaudid in my system. He must’ve suffered greatly.
That can be caused by any opioid, and Fentynal is much much stronger than Dilaudid. In fact Fentynal is so potent that it's prescribed in mcg as opposed to mg like with every other opioid. I've never had that effect from Dilaudid.
I work at a hospital and I've administered countless pain meds including narcotics for surgical and medical patients over the years. It's our hospital policy to monitor post op patents or anyone using a PCA on pulse oxemeter. Respiratory staus and cognitive level of any patient getting an IV narcotic pain med get checked within 30 min. Recently I went to ED for chest pain without any GI symptoms. Morphine didn't relieve chest pain much so they gave me small dose of Dilaudid. Oh my! From then on I couldn't stop vomitting. After 6 emesis and strong anti nausea med, nausea finally stopped. People react differently to certain medications and I learned my lesson. Sorry that you had to deal with such an awful infection from a C section. I hope the surgery went well and you've recovered from it.
Prayers for the family for answers and justice.
Something needs to be done so that people who are in accidents or are there alone are safe if no advocate present to oversee treatment. In addition to protections for everyone.
My dad was in and out of the hospital for 3 years before he passed away. I joined the doctors assistant school and therefore I do know a bit about medical/medications/treatments. It would be too long to write here what all has happened to my dad at the hospital (wrong medication, wrong treatment, no treatment at all, ignoring him, ect). If I wouldn’t of checked on him almost daily at the times he was in the hospital, he would of passed away much earlier. The mistakes they made were because they didn’t care, they didn’t read his patient dossier, and many stupid mistakes they did.
My mom was diagnosed with lymphoma while I was in nursing school. She was experiencing heart failure due to one of the chemo meds she was getting, my sister and I kept bringing up issue of high heart rates ever since she started her chemo sessions and all the doctor said was drink more water (?). It was halfway through her treatment plan when I went to check in on my mom during a chemo session after school one day. I saw my mom's chest acting abnormally irrational and told my dad to call for the nurse. Idk why they did not see it earlier, they ended up admitting her to intensive monitoring in the ICU. When they found out I was a "nurse", their medical director called us personally to apologize and said he will personally oversee my mom. Apologize for what? Thinking back, he never said why. We are Asian, my parents were immigrants now legalized citizens; they lack medical knowledge. They don't question. Back then I was young and naive too. Now thinking back, I get upset with myself because I should have sued the living hell out of them. My family moved on from the situation and don't care anymore; my mom survived but with heart failure. But to this day, as a nurse, I do not trust the medical system. I do not trust the staff. I can see how easily staff can alter records, make things up, make mistakes, especially in horrible working conditions. This was at Kaiser by the way.
This is so scary. I seen another case where a lil girl died from a drug overdose in the hospital.
Even when alarms go off most medical staff just ignore it. I know it's happened to me in the ER and on a unit in the hospital just like most staff ignore when a patient pushes the call bell. I'm very sorry for this families loss and I appreciate them bringing attention to this.
Because every patient thinks he’s the only one in the hospital. When multiple alarms and call lights go off at the same time, they can’t be answered at the same time. This dude couldn’t tolerate pain. If something else was wrong, they would have found it. He died from an opiod overdose which he administered to himself using a PCA pump. Sometimes it pays to bear the pain.
This happened to us! Pls be your family member’s advocate, don’t leave them in the hospital thinking they will be properly treated and cared for. The doctors do not always communicate with the nurses well and esp when rotations are switched and the life saving medication was not issued to my family member. The doctors and nurses make mistakes esp when you have an overworked doctor not giving the attention and care to your family member and when you have multiple different nurses on different rotations for your loved one who has been hospitalized for over a month, it is critical that you trust your gut and make sure the doctors and nurses are giving your loved one the proper medication and life saving treatment and that they are communicating to you so you know what your loved one should need and can make sure it is met by the hospital staff. Be your loved one’s advocate!
This is absolutely sad!! That's why I don't trust hospitals because they have to many medical errors. This guy should have walked out this hospital, and he didn't. My heart is goes out to the family.
A real doctor would have instantly recognized that he was having an adverse reaction to the drug. The nurse practitioner treating him was an idiot.
Thank you very much for this important report.
Kudos to NBC. Not at all excessively dramatic with cheesy music. Facts and good reporting. No family should go through this.
0.6mg of Dilaudid Is NOT the right dose for a PCA. We usually give 0.1-0.2 mg Dilaudid on these patient controlled anesthesia (PCA) pumps.
Let alone, he only had one kidney!😳😳😳 I’m a nurse, and I’m like hawk making rounds in my patients. It only takes a few seconds for someone to go downhill. This should have never happened.
Many nurses (male/female) are there just to flirt with each other
@@et8488 thank you for being attentive and caring well for your patients.
This is heartbreaking RIP! 🙏🏽
They want more monitoring, yet they don't want to pay for the number of nurses needed to do that.
Huh? Who’s they? And being on a monitor doesn’t change the patient volume, so what does being monitored have to do with staffing. There aren’t designated staff to watch the monitors, nor is that necessary in most settings.
@@iriemo721 watching the video, you can see who 'they' are. and by monitoring I mean nurses, not machines. There are plenty of machines but they are useless without the nurses.
As a doctor, I can testify that many hospitals do not continuously monitor the vital signs of patients on opioids, even post-surgically. Many hospitals only have limited resources for this type of equipment, so they reserve this technology for people who have active cardiac issues or need to be in the intensive care. In fact, there can many barriers in place to prevent you from placing a patient in a continuous monitoring unit if they do not meet the hospital's very specific requirements.
gtfo i have a $30 fitbit that can read my oxygen levels on top of everything else!
I can’t imagine the pain his sister is going through.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
One of my greatest fears after only a handful of exposures to hospitals is having something so horrendous happen that I or a member of my family will have to go back at some point. No one can ever convince me that these "medical professionals" are little more than trained assassins. Some things that should be common sense approaches to medical care are completely lost on the majority of these people. Sadly, too many stories and statistics to share here.
Your not alone in this fear
@@iWantToBelieve... many of us have had similar experiences with careless medics...we start noticing patterns.
Your 'sorry' won't cover that up.
It'll be ok though, not too long till the AI programmes replace your disdainful ilk.
Christ.
No pulse ox on a patient who is taking a drug which is known to cause respiratory depression in excess.
No other staff member with the presence of mind to double check that NPs order for safety.
No vitals or assessment for 5 hours?
The only mistake left they could have done would have been the wrong surgery altogether, they made just about every other mistake possible to make.
Very sorry!
Where are the staff it would require in order to respond to the alarms set up to address an "alarming event"!
Yes, just deny or avoid the primary problem, inadequate staffing, and then expect more from the few professionals left to deal with the "main problem" that hospital administrators are ultimately responsible for.
As in most cases, it's all about the $$$, who gets it, and who doesn't!
only $250K for malpractice that killed someone... WHAT A JOKE !!!!!! bottom line: nobody is accountable... nobody lost their medical license over this. and it does not even reimburse their attorney fees. so tragic.
Scary. Unfortunately stuff like this happens all the time! There are some really really horrible hospitals. I’ve had some horrible experiences myself
Please publish the names of the post surgery recovery team so we can protect ourselves. I hope this patient’s sister finds happiness again, this is what this patient would have wanted for her. That’s why he gave his kidney.
But the hospital will likely hide behind HIPAA to not reveal any names.
You can literally feel the sisters pain in your gut when you look at her!! I pray that the family is able to somehow find peace in this situation and know he wanted you to LIVE thats why he gave you his kidney!! Make him proud!!
Kelly I am so Sorry for your loss 😭
I'm so sorry that this happened to you all.
Lawyers will tell you that you are Not able to sue because in order to win, You Must show
Deliberate Intent to Harm.
This Should Not be Accepted as so Many Families suffer and then, have no recourse!
Shameful!
And we’re supposed to trust doctors. Just because someone goes to medical school doesn’t mean they’re good at medicine. Just because someone goes to law school, it doesn’t mean they will be a great lawyer. Stop trusting just because someone has a title next to their name.
Then who are you going to trust to give you medicine?... any random person?
Amen!!!
I’m not saying your statement isn’t correct, but in this case a nurse practitioner was the prescriber…I’m a doctor and when my dad wasn’t feeling well a couple of years ago …a nurse practitioner told him he had allergies…I lived in a different city and asked my mom what his symptoms were…as soon as she told me I said that’s not allergies (sounded like he had symptoms associated with cancer)…I didn’t want to dismiss what the nurse practitioner thought though…but I told my mom if he’s not better in a couple of days he needs to go back and ask for a doctor… a M.D. to see him…a week later my dad was diagnosed with leukemia
@@ctkle trust your own research about what meds to take.
His care wasn't under a physician, who gets their MD/DO degree from medical school. The news segment stated that the Dilaudid was prescribed by a nurse practitioner, which is different.
What a horrible tragedy. I can't imagine the guilt I would feel as a sibling even knowing that it was the hospital's egregious errors that lead to his death.
I was given morphine for pain in the hospital. I hated every second of it. I kept gasping for air. The respiratory depression was terrifying. The nurse was quite cold when my BF alerted them to my situation.
Yes they are awfully neglectful of dilaudid. They gave it to me post kidney transplant and after one night of use, i rejected it outright because it made me feel terrible. They eventually let me take vicodin pills instead, but then that made me throw up and i had to switch to tylenol. I can’t imagine how any nurse or doctor would overlook this issue.
Wow.. what a senseless mistake. I'm not a nurse of doctor but I know your kidneys filter your blood. How did the nurses not know that the body wouldn't be able to filter the drugs properly. And normally someone does not stop breathing after a successful surgery and considering he was on opiates how did they not think of using narcan. I am literally in disbelief. How sad and also scary. His poor sister is going to blame herself too, what a horrible situation.
Why is it just on the Nurses???
@@factsnofeelings9727 because the nurse practitioner gave him over 380% more dilaudid then he needed
@@bigoof8284 My response did not mention the NP at all, you misunderstood. I was responding to the “normally someone does not stop breathing…. How did they not think to use Narcan” comment… making the bedside Nurses sound responsible.
The kidney does not metabolize opioids.....
@@factsnofeelings9727 if you look at postoperative care you understand where I am coming from I think. It is the responsibility of the nurses.
THIS IS INSANE!! I had a pulse ox on my finger after a colonoscopy!!
This absolutely heartbreaking. My mom was a Kidney recipient and although I no longer speak to her donor I will always be thankful for her selfless act of giving my mom the gift of life and thusly 25 more years with her. To give this gift is one of the most amazing things a person can do for another person. It is life changing. Life saving. I cannot imagine the heartache of this family. This should not have happened. One thing that was said that was 100% true in this is that patients need family members to BE THERE and to advocate for them when they are in the hospital. Remember that your family member is one of hundreds of people on the hospital and many hospitals (especially now) are under staffed. I learned this is my mom’s last few months of life. She was in the hospital for 30 days straight and had I not been there I know her stay would’ve been ten times harder. Please pay attention. Ask questions. Share your observations. The nurses can only do so much.
While the adverse event was caused by a multitude of failures, the initial error was made by a provider. Nurse Practitioners should not be allowed to practice without physician supervision. And that supervision should not be only nominal due to an impossibly large number of NPs assigned to each physician.
Oh my gosh this is absolutely horrifying. From him starting to throw up it sounded like he was overdosing. I don’t know, I’m not a medical professional but I am in recovery from an opiate addiction. Anytime one of my loved ones has surgery I’m always super worried.
This is horrible. So sorry for their loss. Trauma of their daughter sickness followed by the trauma of her brother. Too much sadness.
There’s one thing for sure this young man loved his sister ❤️
Crazy and sad. R.I.P
I am a physician, Nephrologist, and will be specializing in Transplant after my training.
One thing I can say is that I need to better understand the dosing of the dialaudid. That part confuses me.
Also monitoring vitals and pulse ox depend on level of care at my hospital. General- every 6 hrs
Intermediate- every four hrs
ICU- every 1 hr
And many pts are not on continuous pulse oximeter unless they present with an apparent clinical need to watch their respiratory status continuously
The one thing that I can say for sure is that I am very surprised that the code team did not think of Narcan.
This is a very tragic situation.
I don't fully understand what happened but it's all very tragic and sad. I see people give kidneys all the time and they usually do great and leave the hospital after some days.
The medical field is a scary career tbh.
We vow to not do harm
But unfortunately things like this can happen
And the mixing of various medicine. And not putting a button with remote control so that the patient press for medicine when the patient is NOT a Doctor! Any patient an also fall asleep and press it by accident! Not too smart to have a remote control like that, the job belongs to the staff
Wow, that's a highly recognized hospital so sad.
A mother's worst fear come true. I feel for her and every other victim of medical malpractice! I was nearly Joan Rivered in 2019 myself... I.e. a routine endoscopic procedure gone wrong... Hugs!
Heartbreaking 🌺RIP🌺
My 84 yr old Dad was recently in the hospital with pneumonia, blood clots in lungs, COPD n bacterial infection. While there...we never left his side. His linens weren't changed...had blood on them, didn't receive dinner or breakfast, or brought anything to drink. If we hadn't been there...what other things would have been ignored?
this is sickening
NPs shouldn't be allowed to treat inpatients
We have plenty of wonderful NPs. It’s too bad this one didn’t check the side when putting in the order. We always have patients on o2 sat monitoring, we check vitals every 4 hours and more as needed. Did this patient go to the ICU after getting his kidney removed? They have a 2:1 ratio and have continuous monitoring on multiple things.
Such a sad and unnecessary loss.
I am so sorry for this families loss. It’s amazing the things that can happen. I was in the recovery room after kidney stone surgery and they thought I’d had a kidney transplant. I woke up and they were about to inject me with something and asked you had a transplant right and I was like NO! Always ask everything. I have also been given too much medication for an autoimmune disease, fortunately nothing happened I was just flushed for about 6 hours😳
If this happens at UCSF, imagine what happens at your community hospital.
How incredibly sad. Trying to help his sister. Glad they found the truth.
but no one was held accountable...;-(... just a little fine... maybe the head of that department should have gone to jail for a little while...just to learn their responsibilities and fiduciary duty.
@@joannsmith3589 the hospitals are so well protected..doctors. I spoke to a attorney once and it's what they told me after I had something happen at a hospital about my daughter.