Apology too late

An autistic 15-year-old boy checked into the acclaimed Seattle Children’s Hospital for a routine dental surgery and ended up dying. Because of his autism, he was unable to swallow oral medications, and so the boy was sent home with a fentanyl painkiller patch on his back. The patch ended up killing him with a narcotics overdose.

The hospital issued an apology, but the family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital and the dentist and is seeking more than one million dollars. Though prescribing a fentanyl patch for pain following a dental procedure is uncommon, the boy’s mother was assured by various medical professionals that the patch would be safe. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Such patches are generally used on patients who have taken strong painkillers before, including cancer patients. The boy had never taken narcotics before, and thus the dose released by the patch proved fatal.

Sure, it was a mistake, and the hospital has taken steps to ensure such a mistake does not happen again, but I don’t know if that makes the boy’s family feel much better.

For more on this story, see this story.

This was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 and is filed in the Dental, Legal, Patient Death categories.