Sixty patients died in Victorian hospitals in 2011-2013 due to mistakes, while a catalogue of 75 other incidents reveals that tubes and surgical packs were left in patients after surgery.
In one case a patient died after surgeons operated on the wrong person or wrong body part, while five died following medication errors, the Victoria Health Department’s latest logs of mistakes show.
Another 13 patients escaped death after having instruments left in their bodies after surgery, however 5 of them lost the function in parts of their body at least temporarily due to the errors.
After two weeks of pain following elective surgery a patient was found to have a plastic draining tube left in their lower abdomen and had to undergo more surgery to remove it. Another suffered an infection when a surgical pack was left inside them after an operation to remove a tumour.
The Department on Wednesday 21/5/14 issued death statistics for 2011-12 and 2012-13, but it refuses to identify which hospitals are responsible.
“Regrettably, adverse events and clinical errors do occur from time to time, with negative impacts for patients, their families and carers, and staff”, the report states.
“The department seeks to learn from these events to prevent them from happening again. To this end, all adverse events are thoroughly investigated to determine the systems and processes that caused them, and to develop and implement preventive strategies.”
In 2011-12, 33 people died in Victoria’s hospitals for reasons that had nothing to do with their admittance condition. Another 27 died in 2012-13. 17 committed suicide while in inpatient units.
Among other incidents:
- Nurses crushed a patient’s antibiotics and administered them into the arm via a catheter, rather than give them as the prescribed oral pills. The patient deteriorated and died;
- A renal failure patient later died after being moved from an Emergency Department to a ward because no intensive care bed was available. Critical information was not passed on;
- Despite being ordered not to feed sandwiches to a patient with a history of choking on small food, staff did so. The patient choked and died;
- A patient died a day after falling from a bed and being found alone and unresponsive.
- Another patient lost the full function of their legs after a medical team missed for a fortnight a build-up of fluid compressing their spinal cord.
MEAG comment: 60 patients only? And the rest! Why aren’t the hospitals being named? Victorians have a right to know which of their hospitals are error-prone.