Children’s Hospital in Seattle seems to be suffering from a few too
many nurses making critical errors. Two nurses there have just been charged
with unprofessional conduct and violation of the minimum standard of care
by the Washington Department of Health. Apparently the errors made by
these two nurses were but a few among quite a few other
medication errors that have caught the critical eye of investigators.
Nurse Linda Kimman caused a patient in the ER to go into cardiac arrhythmia
when she accidentally administered epinephrine through an IV tube. Nurse
Beth Yost apparently decided on her own to give a sick infant three medications.
The infant later died, but the medications were not found to be the cause.
Though only Kimman and Yost are being charged at the moment, other medical
errors occurred around the same time last fall. Another baby died from
an overdose of calcium chloride give to her by a nurse.
For more on this story, see
this article.