CNN posted a list of 10 shocking medical mistakes. These included:
1. Mistake: Treating the wrong patient
2. Mistake: Surgical souvenirs/retained instruments and sponges
3. Mistake: Lost patients/wandered off the grounds of the hospital or nursing home
4. Mistake: Fake doctors
5. Mistake: The ER waiting game/delays in treatment
6. Mistake: Air bubbles in blood
7. Mistake: Operating on the wrong body part
8. Mistake: Infection infestation/hospital acquired infections
9. Mistake: Lookalike tubes
10. Mistake: Waking up during surgery

Here are shocking nursing mistakes that I have seen.

1. The hospitalized patient who was alert, oriented, and ambulatory until the nurse administered an inappropriate dose of Morphine, resulting in a serious overdose;
2. The emergency department patient who developed quadriplegia after the nurse removed the cervical collar without an order and without the spine being cleared of fractures;
3. The unsupervised nursing home resident on a pureed diet who choked on deli meat he grabbed off another resident’s tray;
4. The critical care sitter who sexually assaulted a patient;
5. The paraplegic receiving supplemental nutrition via a nasogastric feeding tube who experienced an aspiration event and died because the RN programmed the feeding pump incorrectly, resulting in the infusion of an excessive amount of feeding over a short period of time;
6. The unsupervised emergency department psychiatric patient who jumped off the roof of the hospital while waiting to be admitted to a psychiatric unit;
7. The medical surgical patient who rolled off the bed while the sheets were being changed because the nurse did not put the side rail up;
8. The patient who fell off the operating room table because the nurse did not apply safety straps;
9. The man who jumped through a window because the nurse did not recognize the need to start one to one supervision
10. The nursing home patient scalded in a bathtub;
11. The pediatric patient who went into respiratory distress and whose home care nurse asked his father to come home instead of following directions to call 911;
12. The surgical patient who fractured a hip after being dropped by a nursing assistant, who did not report the incident

Have you handled a shocking case? What was the shocking mistake?

Med League is a legal nurse consulting firm that assists attorneys handling cases involving medical negligence, personal injury and other litigation with medical issues at stake. Med League nurses have expertise in analyzing medical records for inconsistencies and abnormalities. Contact us for a deep medical analysis of your case.