'Wrong' woman given abortion after nurse mixed up patients

reply to post by malcr


Those people who are not nurses and passing out pills in the nursing home you mentioned are called certified medication administration techs. CMA's. They cost less than nurses but can basically only pass meds and get people up to the bathroom, feed them, bathe them; basic tasks; not "skilled nursing". They can't do dressing changes, start or maintain IV's, give injections of any sort (except subcutaneous insulin). In facilities like nursing homes where the majority of care required are basic tasks and not "skills", CMA's are an inexpensive solution. They work "under" the license of a licensed nurse. I guarantee you that there's a nurse in that nursing home (probably buried under a pile of paperwork that the regulatory agencies require).

The woman in the article went in to see what type of abortion she needed to get and got a pill meant for some other woman's abortion. She was pleased with the "quick" service and went on her merry way. It was not the type of abortion she should have received and caused her problems. She didn't care how she killed the baby as long as the job got done. I think her complaint was that the job wasn't done to her satisfaction and caused her discomfort.

I feel the anger and frustration of the other pro-life poster and sympathize with him greatly but that is not the subject of this thread. It is a worthy topic for discussion but perhaps at another time/place.

Originally posted by whitewave
reply to post by malcr

 

Those people who are not nurses and passing out pills in the nursing home you mentioned are called certified medication administration techs. CMA's. They cost less than nurses but can basically only pass meds and get people up to the bathroom, feed them, bathe them; basic tasks; not "skilled nursing". They can't do dressing changes, start or maintain IV's, give injections of any sort (except subcutaneous insulin). In facilities like nursing homes where the majority of care required are basic tasks and not "skills", CMA's are an inexpensive solution. They work "under" the license of a licensed nurse. I guarantee you that there's a nurse in that nursing home (probably buried under a pile of paperwork that the regulatory agencies require).

In the UK, your (US) CMA's are called HCA's (Health Care Assistants), Nursing Auxiliarys (NA) or Care Assistants. There is no formal system for this type of Carer. There is an educational system in place - NVQ 2 and NVQ 3.

Most Residential Homes are run by this type of carer under a Senior HCA usually at NVQ 3 level or level 4. Nursing Homes will also have these carers but will be under the direction of a Registered Nurse. There is an additional qualification that allows these carers to be able to administer medications.

In hospitals/clinics under the NHS, there are 2 grades or HCA/NA. Senior HCA's (level 3) are able to do minor wound aseptic technique, venepuncture, catheterisation, glucose monitoring, vital signs observations and dependant on 'specialised' area some other skills - after extensive training courses.

I hope that has cleared a few things up.

Originally posted by Wotan


Most Residential Homes are run by this type of carer under a Senior HCA usually at NVQ 3 level or level 4. Nursing Homes will also have these carers but will be under the direction of a Registered Nurse. There is an additional qualification that allows these carers to be able to administer medications.

In hospitals/clinics under the NHS, there are 2 grades or HCA/NA. Senior HCA's (level 3) are able to do minor wound aseptic technique, venepuncture, catheterisation, glucose monitoring, vital signs observations and dependant on 'specialised' area some other skills - after extensive training courses.

I hope that has cleared a few things up.

To really frighten you:
1. The SVQ3(scottish NVQ3 I believe) exam is sooooo easy to pass since they provide the answers with the questions! Honestly my registered nurse friends jaw dropped when she found out. People whose previous experience was zero qualifications and working on a till in a supermarket now have this SVQ3 certificate and a license to treat the elderly....
2. They are trying to get rid of the registered nurses......(to save money).

There is a huge difference between what the authorities will say is happening and what the nurses in those homes are experiencing. Just remember that the homes themselves are monitored by people (care commission) who dictate how the homes should be run. Now if (as is the case with my friend) a jumped up "all image and no substance" person has a number of care homes to monitor and dictates care policy........absolute disaster. The image counts, low costs count, health and well being of the elderly PAH!!!

All of this can be solved so easily: the people who pay for and or recieve the care, rate the care provided. Only that rating counts in assessing the home, hospital, wages etc etc. All of a sudden the person being cared for is the most important aspect of the whole system. Well I never........

reply to post by malcr


I think you will find that Residential Homes do not require a Registered Nurse. Any nursing that is required in Residential Homes are done by the District Nursing Teams.

Nursing Homes on the other hand do have to have Registered Nurses.
There is a big difference between the two types of home.

Originally posted by Ceara
Another handy tip:

When in anyone is in the position of patient, and is handed a pill, the first questions should be

1. what is this pill
2. why am i taking it
3. what does it do
4. what are the side effects
5. should I take with food or is water ok

You don't just blindly take whatever pill someone gives you without asking questions.

Especially while pregnant. If she was going in there for a consultation and stupidly took a pill, well then it's just as much her fault as the NHS.

Patient: "What's this pill?"

Nurse: "Oh, it's the rest of your abortion tablet prescription."

Patient: "What? I don't want to abort, I'm having a baby."

Nurse: "Oops sorry."

You took the words out of my mouth.

Whaaa? You are there for an "initial consultation" and you take a pill someone hands to you, pregnant??? I wouldn't even take an aspirin when I was pg. This is one of those stories where I think to myself, hey I may have been born at night but it wasn't LAST night.

[edit on 22-7-2008 by Bombeni]

There are folks here who are totally disregarding the fact that the woman was going there to get an abortion. Yes, a mistake was made, but it was not murder or manslaughter because the woman was going to terminate her pregnancy. That is why she didnt ask what the pill was. She expected to get a pill to end the pregnancy. The nurse screwed up, but she did not murder anyone in the eyes of the law.

reply to post by raven bombshell


Raven your right that she did not kill anyone in the eyes of the law but she needs to lose her nursing license. Any medication mistake regardless of what it was or who it was going to is HUGE. She was in the clinic for a "consultation" and should not have been given anything unless specified by her. It can also be noted that she is almost a complete DA for not asking what the pill was even if she just wanted to terminate. Crazy story.

reply to post by malcr


Let me explain how your utopian rating system works in real life (and it DOES exist IRL to a certain degree). A whole "me generation" of people who honestly expect to NEVER have anything unpleasant happen to them start getting old. Old age is unacceptable in their eyes. Chronic illnesses are an unnecessary inconvenience which any doctor worth their salt should be able to just magically fix. They don't want nurses. They want valets, personal attendants, serving wenches and a mint on their pillow. At the very least they want a private duty nurse. Can't have all that? "You people suck!" There's your rating system.

Think I'm exaggerating? I could send you last month's article of our local newspaper.

The woman who went in to get an abortion got one. Just not like she would have if she'd had the sense to stick around and actually get a consultation. She figured abortions were like ordering a happy meal at McDonalds and she didn't even have to check her receipt to see if she'd been charged for the fries. The nurse, on the other hand, is scarred for life. "Lady! Lady, come back. I gave you the McNuggets instead of the Happy Meal."

I'm not saying she didn't make a mistake. She did. Giving the wrong med is always a big deal even if there's no injury from it. Should she be thrown in prison? Absolutely not. Should she lose her license? If we took away the license of every nurse that has technically made a med error, nursing as a profession would end tomorrow. If you give a 325 mg. aspirin to someone who had an 81 mg. aspirin ordered, that would be a med error. You want to start filling the prisons and unemployment lines with people who make those kind of mistakes? Good luck finding someone to take care of you WHEN you get sick. Do you think doctors are going to wipe the drool from the corner of your mouth? HA!

Patient A wanted an abortion and wouldn't have gotten one if she hadn't have been mixed up. She still managed to have her own child murdered at the end of the day and she'll probably make a few thousand in claims out of it also. Calthorpe Clinic and all other genocidal centers should be shut or burned down.

reply to post by whitewave


Whitewave is absolutely right, its no different here in the UK to the US on that score.

Any type of error to do with medications is technically a 'drug error'. This can range from giving a drug at the wrong time, to the wrong dose, wrong route to the completely wrong medication.

I was told by a Tutor during my nurse training, that ALL Nurses during their career WILL make a drug error of some description ..... you have to hope that the error you make is not a life threatening one. The Tutor basically was right as I know none that have not made a mistake at some point in their career.

So go ahead and lock up or take away the 'offending nurses' registration for any nurse that makes a drug error ........ You will very soon not have a healthcare system at all.

Oh well, stupid me I didn't realize that patient A was there for an abortion also, might help if I read the links. I thought maybe it was a women's health clinic and she was there to start prenatal care. Anyway, no real harm done, of course the nurse still made a mistake, but patient A should not be able to become wealthy from it. Are there large punitive awards given in Britain? I thought it was harder to sue there for some reason.

reply to post by Bombeni


Lets put it this way, its not quite the ''sueing culture'' as the US is. Also when someone does make a claim, the pay out is not to the US rate of payment.

In this case, if a legal claim was successful, it would be likely that the Clinics' Insurance Company that would payout the claim, not the Doctors or Nurses.

Also, this is not a criminal case, so a private civil one would have to be persued.

reply to post by Wotan


Thanks. The US is enacting a few new guidelines that prevent people from exploiting the system so badly.

Unfortunately mistakes happen but Nurses are trained to deal with hectic patience, and a rushed life in the doctor's office/hospital, so they should be able to deal with it because they are so trained. With something as important as a baby at stake, someone should have double checked. I'm not saying that its entirely the nurses fault, the patient should have asked questions, I would. If I was coming in for an initial check up and was handed a pill, I'd want to know why but maybe it's foolish of me to expect that everyone would have questions to ask after evaluating the position that their in.

The nurse should have double checked but she didn't. The patient should have asked. Both are at fault but moreso the nurse because she didn't triple check, patients just take it as it comes. If it is a doctor or a nurse giving them something to drink, there is the ideal there that someone higher trained than you can never be wrong. That is the mistake as well.

I hope the nurse gets out of this one without losing her mind, and I pray that Patient A will some day forgive, this mistake. I'm sorry for her loss.

Originally posted by Angirach
Unfortunately mistakes happen but Nurses are trained to deal with hectic patience, and a rushed life in the doctor's office/hospital, so they should be able to deal with it because they are so trained. With something as important as a baby at stake, someone should have double checked. I'm not saying that its entirely the nurses fault, the patient should have asked questions, I would. If I was coming in for an initial check up and was handed a pill, I'd want to know why but maybe it's foolish of me to expect that everyone would have questions to ask after evaluating the position that their in.

The nurse should have double checked but she didn't. The patient should have asked. Both are at fault but moreso the nurse because she didn't triple check, patients just take it as it comes. If it is a doctor or a nurse giving them something to drink, there is the ideal there that someone higher trained than you can never be wrong. That is the mistake as well.

I hope the nurse gets out of this one without losing her mind, and I pray that Patient A will some day forgive, this mistake. I'm sorry for her loss.

I would just like to point out, that Patient A was going to the Clinic for a consultation about having a termination. The Calthorpe Clinic is a Termination Clinic.

Originally posted by Angirach
Unfortunately mistakes happen but Nurses are trained to deal with hectic patience, and a rushed life in the doctor's office/hospital, so they should be able to deal with it because they are so trained. With something as important as a baby at stake, someone should have double checked. I'm not saying that its entirely the nurses fault, the patient should have asked questions, I would. If I was coming in for an initial check up and was handed a pill, I'd want to know why but maybe it's foolish of me to expect that everyone would have questions to ask after evaluating the position that their in.

The nurse should have double checked but she didn't. The patient should have asked. Both are at fault but moreso the nurse because she didn't triple check, patients just take it as it comes. If it is a doctor or a nurse giving them something to drink, there is the ideal there that someone higher trained than you can never be wrong. That is the mistake as well.

I hope the nurse gets out of this one without losing her mind, and I pray that Patient A will some day forgive, this mistake. I'm sorry for her loss.

Hi, this is interesting because I have been seeing the same specialist for 10 years, I go in about every 2 months. And every time I go whichever nurse is checking me into the exam room always asks me: is your birthdate such n such, your full name is yakety yak. It kinda bugs me because I would think "geez how many years do I have to come here before these people figure out who I am" but now I see, they are performing as they were trained.

wow... I would destroy that hospital (legally of course) after that. Another fine example of incompetence in the medical community.

[edit on 23-7-2008 by Raverous]

I have to agree that the doctor should be the one that takes the brunt of the blame for this. The nurse is also a co-conspirator in this though. The patient is both stupid and ignorant, but that is not criminal, which leaves her as the disheartened victim in this case. This could easily be a case for negligent homicide on the doctor's part and conspiracy to commit on the nurse's part.

In all of the times I have been to either a routine or emergency medical trip, the only thing that the nurse did without a doctor present was take and monitor "vitals". I have never accepted medication of my own free will without asking the doctor what and why.

In reference to people that have had the wrong body parts removed or operated on, I have had one major surgery to date...ACL replacement. The doctor that was performing the surgery came in and told me exactly what was going to happen, in all of its gruesome detail. I knew every instrument being used, every type of medication/sedation that would be used, how many people would be involved and was even offered the option of a video tape of the session. At the end of the consult, I was handed a marker. The doctor, a nurse and myself all agreed on the knee to be operated on, I marked a circle and an X on the leg and knee, then we all three initialed it for clarification. On the other leg, I was told to write in all caps, NOT THIS KNEE! It was all humorous to a point, but I fully understood why and happily marked myself up, even asking if I should mark anything else, just to make sure I didnt get in the wrong room or the wrong surgery. The doc said I could write on myself all I wanted. As a goof, I asked the nurse to write ACL ONLY across my forehead, since it was most certainly a body part that would not be covered up.

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to whether the nurse in question was a UK national, or foreign.

Racist rant? No, just some real world recognition of the risks associated with importing a workforce with poor language skills "they had the same first name" - sounds suspicious to me.

You decide.

Originally posted by Retseh
Anyone care to hazard a guess as to whether the nurse in question was a UK national, or foreign.

Racist rant? No, just some real world recognition of the risks associated with importing a workforce with poor language skills "they had the same first name" - sounds suspicious to me.

You decide.

Well the Nurses' name was Ann Downer. It doesnt sound very 'foreign' to me.

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