Medication error causes brain damage to infant

A medical malpractice suit was filed in Florida against a hospital, alleging that a medication error led to the premature birth of a child with resulting brain damage.  The child's mother had been admitted to the hospital to be put on bed rest at the 22nd week of her pregnancy.  Her doctors ordered medication to prevent the child from being delivered but she was instead given another medication which resulted in her delivering the child while she was seated on a portable toilet.

While I am not familiar with the exact facts of what happened in with this case, as an experienced Chicago personal injury lawyer, I suspect that there are two likely causes for this medication error: (1) she was given the wrong medication due to a sound-alike error (i.e., when the order was called into the pharmacy, the pharmacist heard and prepared a different medication from the one ordered) or (2) there was an error in the preparation and delivery of the medication (i.e., they simply took the wrong medication off the shelf).

In a hospital setting there are additional steps beyond those that are taken in the hospital pharmacy to prevent medication errors.  When nurses give medications, they are trained to make 5 checks: right patient, right medication, right dose, right route, and right time.  This is an additional safeguard against medication errors that was apparently disregarded in this case.

For its part, the hospital has admitted that the error took place and that they have put in additional safeguards to prevent recurrence of this type of error.  Unlike most kinds of medical malpractice cases, when there is a medication error, there is usually one or more discrete, identifiable places where the error occurred, and once identified, the possibility of recurrence can be lessened through changes in procedure or retraining.