Nurse Kills Patient, Then Kills Herself
Kimberly Hiatt had been a registered nurse for twenty five (25) years. She worked at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. Unfortunately, on September 14, 2010, she was taking care of a baby in the neonatal intensive care unit and accidently miscalculated the dose of Calcium chloride and gave the baby ten times the ordered dosage. Ms. Hiatt was escorted from the hospital after reporting her mistake and immediately put on administrative leave and then fired a few weeks later. The baby subsequently died five days later, and it is unclear if the mistake contributed to the death or whether the baby’s fragile condition and poor prognosis led to the death.
There was an investigation by the State Board of Nursing and she was fined $3,000.00, placed on probation for four years and required to take eighty (80) hours of new course work on medication administration. Her supervisor was to report to the Board every ninety days. It appeared that Ms. Hiatt was talking to a co-worker when she gave the baby the excessive dose of medication. On April 3, 2011, Ms. Hiatt’s body was found after committing suicide.
There are ninety eight thousand (98,000) deaths each year attributable to preventable errors in hospitals. The question becomes why are there so many deaths? There are other industries which are high-tech, such as nursing, where people’s lives depend on it, but they don’t have nearly the number of errors and deaths that occur in hospitals. Examples of these industries include the airline transportation industry and the nuclear power industry. If an error occurs in these industries, the public would not tolerate it. Why does the public tolerate the number of deaths in hospitals and how can these deaths be prevented?
In hospitals, nurses are over worked and underpaid. They are required to do a number of tasks simultaneously and to be ready in the event of any emergency situation. It appears to me that the number of deaths are attributable to nurse being distracted from the task at hand and not being present with what they are doing. This is a clear example of a nurse being distracted, talking to a coworker when she was administering medication. Nurses are constantly thinking about what they need to do next or worrying about a patient and having their mind on other things rather than the task at hand. It would be beneficial to the profession to teach nurses how to be present in the moment for each task at hand rather than worrying about what needs to be done next. This type of thinking would prevent a lot of unnecessary mistakes and deaths in the hospital.
It is truly unfortunate that hospitals are not more supportive of nurses when they make a mistake. This was Ms. Hiatt’s first medication error in twenty five years of nursing, which is amazing. Unfortunately, the consequences were devastating. Two lives were lost as a result. Hospitals need to be more sensitive to the needs of nurses and help them cope with the stresses and demands of this intense profession. For more information on helping nurses with licensure issues, visit me at www.EmpoweredNurses.org.
