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Look-Alike Tubes Lead To Hospital Deaths

Posted by timothy on from the no-wait-this-one-goes-in-your-mouth dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "In hospitals around the country, nurses connect and disconnect interchangeable clear plastic tubing sticking out of patients' bodies to deliver or extract medicine, nutrition, fluids, gases or blood — sometimes with deadly consequences. Tubes intended to inflate blood-pressure cuffs have been connected to intravenous lines leading to deadly air embolisms, intravenous fluids have been connected to tubes intended to deliver oxygen, leading to suffocation, and in 2006 a nurse at in Wisconsin mistakenly put a spinal anesthetic into a vein, killing 16-year-old who was giving birth. 'Nurses should not have to work in an environment where it is even possible to make that kind of mistake,' says Nancy Pratt, a vocal advocate for changing the system. Critics say the tubing problem, which has gone on for decades, is an example of how the FDA fails to protect the public. 'FDA could fix this tubing problem tomorrow, but because the agency is so worried about making industry happy, people continue to die,' says Dr. Robert Smith." This reminds me of the sort of problem that Michael Cohen addressed in a slightly different medical context (winning a MacArthur Foundation grant) a few years ago.

8 of 520 comments (clear)

  1. Its not just the internet by maroberts · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..that's just a series of tubes, then

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
    Karma: Chameleon

    1. Re:Its not just the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Whooossshhh... That's why people is dying... they are connecting them to the Internet instead to the IV.

  2. Pun potential detected by dark_panda · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hmmm I wonder if this Dr. Robert Smith fellow has... The Cure... to such problems...?

  3. Re:Thinking out of the box by corbettw · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nah, women are rarely colorblind.

    <whispers in background>

    Wait, there male nurses now? When did that happen?

    --
    God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
  4. Re:RFID by goodmanj · · Score: 2, Funny

    Okay, so I said in an earlier comment that there's no such thing as over-engineering things when medical devices are concerned.

    You just proved me wrong.

  5. Re:How about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And a silver band means 10 percent tolerance, and gold means 5!

  6. Re:Ummm Personal responsibility? by jimicus · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've met girls with that kind of attitude to something potentially risky - "Just be careful".

    Most of those girls are now mothers.

  7. Re:Why has no one taken this thread seriously... by conspirator57 · · Score: 3, Funny

    i don't know, but it reminds me of the scene from Idiocracy where the "Doctor" tells the protagonist to put one probe in his mouth and the other in his rear, then realizes he made a mistake and asks him to switch them.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CHY41trBFQ&feature=search

    about 0:40 into the trailer.

    --
    "If still these truths be held to be
    Self evident."
    -Edna St. Vincent Millay