Fatal medical error drives nurse to suicide.

[RandySF]

For registered nurse Kimberly Hiatt, the horror began last Sept. 14, the moment she realized she’d overdosed a fragile baby with 10 times too much medication.

Stunned, she told nearby staff at the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital what had happened. “It was in the line of, ‘Oh my God, I have given too much calcium,’” recalled a fellow nurse, Michelle Asplin, in a statement to state investigators.

In Hiatt’s 24-year career, all of it at Seattle Children’s, dispensing 1.4 grams of calcium chloride — instead of the correct dose of 140 milligrams — was the only serious medical mistake she’d ever made, public investigation records show.

“She was devastated, just devastated,” said Lyn Hiatt, 49, of Seattle, Kim’s partner and co-parent of their two children, Eli, 18, and Sydney, 16.

That mistake turned out to be the beginning of an unraveled life, contributing not only to the death of the child, 8-month-old Kaia Zautner, but also to Hiatt’s firing, a state nursing commission investigation — and Hiatt's suicide on April 3 at age 50.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43529641/ns/health-health_care/t/nurses-suicide-highlights-twin-tragedies-medical-errors/?GT1=43001

[physioex]

1. Truly Sad.....

There needs to be multiple safety systems in place that prevent such things.

[Rageneau]

2. Poor woman.

It's only people with consciences who suffer from guilty ones.

[Brickbat]

3. The agency's sanctions against her were terrible.

A storm of media attention followed news of the error, spurring state nursing commission officials to open an investigation into whether Hiatt’s license should be revoked. Ultimately, the agency imposed sanctions instead, including a $3,000 fine, 80 hours of new coursework on medication administration and four years of probation in which any supervisor would be required to report on Hiatt's work every 90 days.

[undeterred]

4. Mistakes do happen.

When I worked at University of Chicago there was a patient with testicular cancer who was given 10x too much of a chemotherapy drug. It was a tired resident who wrote the order and a nurse who administered it- there were 3 people who could have caught the mistake but nobody did until after the patient started getting sicker and by then it was too late and he was dying.

Imagine having to tell a patient in his 30s who was not expected to die that you accidentally gave him something that is going to kill him.

It did lead to a review of procedures. I think the worst part was knowing that this was one of the most curable kinds of cancer. The hospital killed him and the family sued. I hope the people involved got over it. There was no harm intended.

The drug was fairly new and nobody was very familiar with the dosage.