Dennis Quaid's Newborn Twins Victims of Medication Error
It's a nightmare that most parents of children with special needs must have at one time or another: Your child is hospitalized, and one of those busy busy professionals who run around sticking needles into your little patient grabs the wrong bottle and, instead of injecting something life-saving or life-preserving, injects something horribly life-threatening.
We may also, secretly, jealously, have imagined that if our child was at some big fancy well-known hospital, or if we were some high-profile celebrity getting special treatment, such things would not happen.
So it's maybe doubly scary to read today about the newborn twins of actor Dennis Quaid and his wife, Kimberly, being dosed with 1,000 times the amount of blood thinner they were supposed to have received. According to an ABC News report, the medication Heparin was being administered to keep the babies' IVs from clotting, but instead of getting a dose of 10 units per millimeter, they got 10,000.
The case is similar to one that occurred a little over a year ago at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. In that case, three babies died after a pharmacy technician accidentally put adult-sized doses of Heparin in a cabinet used by the neo-natal intensive care unit.
The Quaid twins are apparently luckier; the ABC News report quotes a spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where the babies were being treated, as saying "it appears at this point there was no harm to any patient."
There is certainly harm done, though, to the trust parents place in hospitals when news like this comes to light.
How can we believe that the flurry of things done in our children's alleged best interests -- whether in an emergency room or an ICU or even a doctor's office full of vaccines -- are really the right thing, when even experts admit that dangerous mistakes can very easily be made?
How can we trust that our children will be well cared for when even famous kids in famous hospitals (according to its own site, Cedars-Sinai was named among the Best of the Best American Hospitals by U.S. News and World Report) can suffer from screw-ups? Even if we would be allowed to inspect every substance that enters our children's bodies, would we know what to look for?
Best of luck to all four Quaids in weathering this current medical mishap. If your child has ever been the victim of a medication mistake -- or if you just suspect there may have been one -- share your concerns in the comments.
Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
It is a shame but a fact of life that there is no fool proof method to prevent mistakes. The investigation will probably show that at least 5 different people should have caught this mistake before it ever got to the patient.
It is a basic fact that a “fool proof system” is only “fool proof” for the “fool” that devised it. That is because the person devising the system, thought about of all the ways they could make the error, not all the ways the error could be made. This proves that somebody else just found another way.
That is not much comfort to the family but it is a sad truth.
In spite of what people say computerized and automated systems can be just as vulnerable…. the mistake happens another way.
That statement comes from 30 years of hospital experience and investigating errors such as these.
Overall Can we do better? Sure we can This error will be reviewed by every hospital in the nation to see what steps can be made to prevent this from happening at their institution.