Quick To Play The Blame Game

While watching ABC TV’s Good Morning America I was shocked but not surprised by this story by Andrea Canning. A mother of triplets was breast feeding one of the babies, in the hospital when the child flat lined in the arms of her mom Jessica Blischke.  Doctors were able to revive the baby and thankfully she appears to be just fine.  The child was given 400 times the amount of morphine usually given to infants.

To quote from the story:

“The doctors at Mission Hospital in California did not know what caused the collapse until Taylee  (the child) tested positive for high levels of opiates; chemicals found in drugs such as heroin and morphine.

The Blischkes, who live outside Seattle, Wash., say doctors turned their attention to Jessica, who they assumed had been using drugs and passed the toxins on to the baby through her breast milk.

But as quickly as she was accused, Blischke was vindicated by two living, breathing clues, her other daughters. When doctors tested Tasha and Tessa for opiates, results came back negative. Blischke was breastfeeding the triplets, so all the sisters would have tested positive had she been a drug user.”

So what happened?  A nurse mixed up the IV lines between mother and baby.  Of course an apology was coming right?  Wrong.  The triplets are now 16 months old and the words I am sorry have to been uttered.  Here is part of the hospital’s statement released to ABC.

“Protecting the health and wellbeing of all of our patients is fundamental to our mission and values as caregivers at Mission Hospital. Our healthcare organization is deeply concerned about an incident that occurred in which an infant was mistakenly administered a medication last year. Consistent with our commitment to our patients we have conducted a process review and provided ongoing education and training for our patient care teams with regard to administering medications. Our top priority is to ensure we do everything possible to maintain the safe patient care environment for which our hospital is known to our community.”

Blah blah blah it goes on and on.  Excuses were given about how tired the nurse was.  When I go to a hospital I expect the staff to be on their game 100 per cent of the time.

Next time you are in a hospital and the staff wants to administer anything to you, ask and ask again.  It is your life on the line and you have every right to know what is going on with your care.  If you are not sure, do not take the medicines until you speak with YOUR doctor.  No one cares about your life more than you do.