Nurse accidentally pulls the plug on patient
ROS sends us a link to a news story about that wonderful social medicine in Britain. 37-year-old Jamie Merrett, paralyzed from the neck down and around-the-clock care, went without machine-supplied air for 21 minutes;
In 2008, though, he started to become increasingly concerned over serious errors made by nurses operating his ventilator, his sister Karren Reynolds told the BBC. He sent off several e-mails to local health bosses, and — after his concerns weren’t acted on — asked for a camera to be installed in his bedroom so he could record any accidents.
Unfortunately, his fears were well-founded. Just a few days after the webcam was set up early last year, it filmed nurse Violetta Aylward accidentally switching off the ventilator. In the video, the life-support system can be heard emitting a long, loud beep, causing Aylward to shout for help. A care assistant rushes into the room and asks the nurse: “What have you done?” Aylward replies, “Switched this off.”
See, that’s the kind of stuff that happens when you expand the health care system too quickly, rush badly-needed professionals through their training and send them out into the world with only rudimentary skills. Here’s the video of Merrett’s last few moments on Earth;
Category: Health Care debate
Quite honestly, were I to wind up like that, I’d probably just as soon that someone “pull the plug”. However, that’s just me. (or some other way to go that might be a little less traumatic)
This is not just something that happens in Britain, France, Spain, Germany, or any other developed country in the world. Unfortunately I have seen, and my wife has experienced, just as bad care in American hospitals. She once had her entire left side go numb and lost the ability to speak while in the ER. The doctor told her it was nothing to worry about and just sent her home. This was the stroke that eventually caused secondary dystonia. We have great insurance and were in a private hospital. Believe it or not, Americans die in private hospitals due to terrible care every day. It just doesn’t make the news anymore.
I was injured in a bike accident in France. I had the best medical treatment I have ever experienced. It isn’t the country, the system, or ev en the hospital. Sometimes it just comes down to the person.
Did we miss this part?
“…..that the company was fully aware it had been required to supply a nurse with training in the use of a ventilator, but that it didn’t have adequate systems to check its employees’ skill levels.
And the British Patients Association has criticized the NHS for failing to institute its own safety checks and follow up on Merrett’s e-mails. “The NHS has been warned repeatedly about ensuring the staff it hires, agency or otherwise, are suitably trained to look after their patients, and we have campaigned for many years for an NHS that listen to its patients’ concerns,” Katherine Murphy, the organization’s chief executive, said in a statement.”
Something we can all look forward to if we cannot reverse Obamacare, starting with this next election.
There is NO accidentally “pulling the plug” on someone. Ventilators are built with back-up systems, and the failure of any one of those systems causes an alarm that is loud and continuous. It’s an “all hands on deck” sound that can be heard through walls and doors and floors. You have to MANUALLY SILENCE THAT ALARM, either by a button on the top or side, unplugging the machine, or shut the machine all the way off.
In my mind and experience, 21 minutes off-line = murder.
The NHS In Britain needs to cut costs. Therefor, a certain number of patients are lost to “accidents” each year. It’s right up there with letting terminally ill patients starve to death, or intentionally giving placebos to terminally ill rather than real medicines that might prolong their livers, and, thus, costs to the system.
Those stories are all too real, and all too often, but when the government basically controls the press as well, it’s hard for the truth to get out in all but the most egregious cases.
AW1 Tim:
I won’t disagree with what you’ve said, but the implications would be horrifying; as bad as anything the Nazis ever did. It would mean there are government medical workers who willingly and knowingly snuff their patients, under orders. If the British government is condoning that, we can cross them off our list of allies, as far as I’m concerned.
I have to disagree with Tim for one primary reason, it’s categorically impossible to keep that kind of policy or practice quiet for any reasonable length of time, especially in this day and age. In this instance I smell either a straight murder based on some as yet unrevealed personal issue, or straight criminal incompetence.
I won’t deny these things happen, I just don’t believe they are a part of any kind of systematic ‘policy’. Everyone loves a good conspiracy, but really, the breadth and width of incompetence in any system will usually astound people. Civilization the world over is entirely too trusting, with examples ranging from loaning money to recent acquaintances based on a ‘feeling’ that a person is trustworthy, to placing your trust in organizations simply because they purport to care about your well being. Unfortunately logic is not the order of the day, and never really has been.
Jacobite, I agree. There have been cases in the news of individuals who do murder chronically ill or paralysed patients. There have also been instances of what probably could be called “systemic neglect.” Nursing homes being notorious for huge bedsores on their patients would be an example. But as far as any healthcare system advocating a policy of patient euthanasia…that would be way, way over the line.
I just can’t understand how the hell she got the bag on wrong? If you don’t see a rise in the chest then obviously something is wrong. Hell if worse comes to worse blow in the trach. Hell this is stuff I learned within my first term of Nursing School.
Jamie Merrett didn’t die. But he’s got a monumentally shitty quality of life now. From the article:
“His life is completely changed. He doesn’t have a life now,” Reynolds said. “He has an existence but it’s nowhere near what it was before. He is very brain damaged compared to what he was before. He was a highly intelligent man and you could have long in-depth conversations with him and now it tends to be more simplistic.”
After 3 Heart attacks ,1 Bypass 14 Stints and a completely blocked LAD. Yes completely blocked LAD, (surrounding arteries have picked up the slack). I know I’m FUCKED once Obamacare kicks in. Hell ,I have no doubt that I would already be Dead if we had aready been under socialized medicine.
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It was a damn shame this happened to a man who wanted to live and was coherent and ALIVE. I say to turn the machine off and silence the alarm is tantamount to murder. Call it neglect or stupidity it comes down to the same thing. God help us if Obamacare isn’t repealed!
@11 I may be in error if he did not die. In any case he was the victim of gross, gross neglect. Now his quality of life, if he is alive, is shitty. No communications due to brain damage or the life as he knew it and was at least pleased with what he was given.
Well it appears someone was able to have not just the video yanked, but the person entire account was nuked by google for “copyright infringement”.
National Healthcare is substandard care for all… when are the people of this country going to wake up and understand that this is what awaits them at the end of the Obamacare road we have been placed on?