I hate both the original world-class homicidal level of dumbfuckery described in the following story, and even more, the level of jackassery drawn to burp out their collective "wisdom", like moths drawn to a flame, in response.
This was the story at Kenny's Knuckledraggin My Life Away site, "where bad choices make good stories".
(Charlotte Observer) A nurse at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center thought they were giving a frightened patient “something to help (them) relax.” Instead, the nurse mistakenly administered a fatal dose of a drug sometimes used to execute condemned prisoners, WTVF reported.A commenter posted essentially the same information here yesterday, leading to this comment from me, here, before it was even posted at Knuckledraggin , and with the additional information that Medicare was threatening to cut the hospital off completely from participating in Medicare and associated government programs, because they had attempted to cover up the original incident:
The nurse intended to order the anti-anxiety drug Versed but instead ordered Vecuronium, a general anesthesia drug used to sedate patients for surgery. It is also part of the drug cocktail used to execute some prisoners through lethal injection, WTVF reported.
According to the report, a nurse couldn’t find the medication in the patient’s profile, and so did an “override” to find other medicines. Then nurse typed two letters, “ve” and selected the first one without checking the name on the vial. The medication dispensed was Vecuronium, not Versed.
A hospital spokesperson said the error occurred “because a staff member had bypassed multiple safety mechanisms that were in place to prevent such errors” and that the hospital would “continue to work closely with representatives of Tennessee Department of Health and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to assure that any remaining concerns are fully resolved within the specified time frame,” WTVF reported.
The incident put the hospital under review from Medicare, forcing the hospital to make a plan to prevent such an event from happening again, The Nashville Tennessean reported. Without corrective action, the hospital could have been cut off from reimbursements. About a fifth of the hospital’s income comes from Medicare, according to the paper.
"1) Medicare isn't going to terminate Vanderbilt's Medicare contract:And then the fun started at Kenny's site, as the lunatic fringe chimed in on the original story:
They want changes, and they'll get them. They may even financially punish them, but they won't go to contract termination. That's just saber-rattling. It would ruin the hospital, possibly all the way to financial failure, and punish the Medicare recipients who lost that resource far more harshly than necessary, even more than the hospital.
2) Vanderbilt personnel should be terminated:
a) the person(s) who was/were responsible for making a report to state medical oversight, and tried to hide the incident
b) the nurse who screwed the original order/med administration up
BTW, vecuronium is a paralytic, used for intubation, while Versed is an anti-anxiety med/sedative; how someone not insane could switch one for the other and not notice is something that should be investigated, under oath, at a hearing to suspend or revoke nursing licensure at inquest, and probably at criminal arraignment.
That's an admin error that resulted in a fatality, and requires that whoever did it was at minimum a total moron, or else trying to kill someone. That level of negligence, if that's indeed what it was, or worse, should be answered at an inquest and probably a criminal trial as well. At a minimum, we're talking involuntary manslaughter by gross professional negligence.
As a single incident, it would be difficult, and gross stupidity, to punish an entire hospital system for a single medication error, even one that lead to a death. That's swatting a fly with artillery. But the failure to mandatorily report the mistake is conspiracy to cover up after the fact, and the person(s) who did that should be fired, if not prosecuted as well. That's something for the state's attorney general to look into, along with what lawyers are going to turn into a lotto payday for next-of-kin.
QED
As these are slam-dunk cases based on that article, I'm wondering why they aren't already referred for prosecution at every level.
If I were the member at large for the state nursing licensure board, that nurse's license would either be suspended for 10 years at minimum, or revoked outright.
That level of screw-up is inexcusably and unexplainably outrageous.
If I were on the civil jury for the family, the payout would be in the low 8 figures: $2-5M for the death, and treble that in punitive damages for the cover-up.
Along with criminal charges and fines, that's the only way they learn not to do that." -Aesop
Walpurgis says:He could have left it there, and I'd have walked on by, because he'd have been right, to that point. But hubris and stupidity never knows when to quit while ahead:
This shit happens ALL the time. You practice medicine. Wrong surgery, wrong amputation, all sorts of crap.
It’s a fun fact to look up, but 1 in 3 patients admitted to the hospital die there.
Srsly? "1 in 3"? Like you figure no one has a mouse, or Google??
My response to that load of horseshit:
Aesop says:The host:
And that’s absolute bullshit, but thanks for playing.
FTR, there were +/- 37,000,000 hospital admissions in most any year you’d care to look up.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/459718/total-hospital-admission-number-in-the-us/
I’m pretty sure we’d notice more deaths than WWII, including the Holocaust, every freaking year.
The actual number of deaths is about 800K/yr. <800k p="" yr.="">And the vast majority of those deaths are people >85 y.o., so it isn’t like the ones who die are shocking anyone.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db118.htm
So maybe actually look that shit up before you tell us how “fun” it is, when you biff the actual number of deaths by 4600%. (I even rounded that down to go easier on you.)
No excuse, man, that took me 4 mouseclicks to run down in about a minute.
Math: still actually a thing.
As far as the original story: that’s a nurse who needs a criminal trial for manslaughter, after they yank their license for from 10 years to life, and he/she and the people at Vanderbilt who failed to report that to the state need firing and prosecuting.
I expect the civil suit will come to something in the low 8 figures.
Especially as the death could have been avoided by, y’know, looking at the frickin’ label on the vial.
That should be prison time, right there.
Wirecutter says:
Let’s see, when I went to moderate just now there were 2 comments from you to 2 different readers, both of them insulting which seems to be the way all your comments roll.
I bet you’re a real joy to live with.
The other post in question:
GregN says:
Fun fact. Check out CDC mortality stats for “medical misadventure” (i.e. f#$k ups). Something around 75K to 80K die every year in clinics, hospitals and MD offices because of incompetence.
On the other hand, gotta get rid of those guns because 8 or 9K are murdered and around 10K off themselves by guns every year. Oh and it’s normal to dispose of 1.5 million lumps of tissue every year /sarc
Amazing the lack of perspective isn’t it?
My response to that turd in the punchbowl:
Aesop says:
Nota bene, if you please, the complete lack of pejorative aimed at said second poster, rather the surgical precision of language that noted that it's the "data" cited that's absolute codswallop.11/30/2018 at 16:18
It’s brought to you by the same pseudo-science that gave you anthropogenic globull warming, the hazards of second-hand smoke, and spousal abuse claims during Superbowl halftime: i.e. pulled entirely from some SJW’s nether parts. still steaming, and smelling exactly like you’d expect from way up between their butt cheeks.
I won't apologize for pointing out someone's foundation is quicksand. Anything rude or condescending is the fault of the poster for choosing that, not mine.
The peanut gallery response to that reply:
Padawan says:Yeah, you got me. It's all me. The person who claims we whack one out of three patients routinely isn't Debbie Downer for pulling "facts" out of their ass. The person who knee-jerk swallows pseudo-science and passes it off as Truth is Good Time Charlie. All I did was try to wrangle in a couple of facts and some logic at the party, and I'm the bad guy.
Wow. You’re just a bright ray of fucking sunshine, ain’tcha cupcake?
Well-played.
Then there's the next buttnugget:
WestcoastDeplorable says:I don't recall my full reply to that one, and it's currently sitting in moderation limbo, but it won't endear me to the commentor, nor likely the host, either, but it went something like this:
Moral to the story? Stay away from the hospital. Especially near holidays. I friend of mine went to the ER on Labor day complaining of a pain in his leg. Since it was a holiday and they were short-staffed, instead of doing a scan they sent him home with aspirin and painkillers.
You guessed it…..the problem was a blood clot and they amputated his leg the next day.
"The next day?" That would have required a blood clot the size of his head. They wouldn't have needed to scan him, they could have just held him up to the light to see that.
We don't even amputate black, gangrenous body parts within 24 hours.
Seriously, guys, let's just sit around telling 3rd grade campfire horror stories.
Like the amputated hand that wouldn't die.
Or the Chicken heart That Ate New York.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE0hHEtkkQA
In a follow-up, I told the host I sincerely apologize for any trouble to which I put him, and I meant it. I'll also be skipping Kenny's site for the foreseeable future, without further discussion or decision. He'll do fine with or without my commentary contributions. It's absolutely his site, and any host can cultivate the commentariat he or she values. I have no desire to make his day harder, and Kenny's actual postings run from interesting to cringeworthy to hilarious, and ten days out of nine, Knuckledraggin' is a better news outlet than anything in the MSM, on any level. You should go there, regularly.
Look, I get these two facts:
(And notice, please, the typical Internet meme on that second one - that I corrected there - gets it wrong by noting incorrectly "Even if you win, you're still a retard". Comedy is hard, Internet Minions of Stupidity. If you can't do the joke without bungling the punchline, stay on the porch with the small dogs. Just me, being a fucking ray of sunshine again.)
Like all other informational media (magazines, newspapers, TV, etc.) there are two groups of people who post on the Internet:
A) Those who know what they're talking about, and
B) Those who don't.
Group B is further divided:
1) Those who don't know what they don't know. Those are the Ignorant.
2) Those who don't care what they don't know. Those are the Stupid.
It's not a crime to be ignorant. It's even curable, if you wish, with minimal effort.
But the only check on stupidity is fastballs, thrown up high near the chin.
And those groups are not represented by proportional quantities. Signal to noise on the 'net is about 1:10, on a good day, and 1:100 from some places. So if you're Ignorant, unf*ck yourself. If you're Stupid, STFU.
There's a corollary to those undeniable truths, boys and girls:
If you put on your feathered hat, and wing suit, and stick pinfeathers up your ass, then wander onto the grounds of the Turkey Shoot, hide in the bushes, and say "Gobble! gobble!", like any other total jackass, you don't get to piss, whine, and moan when you're awarded an ass-full of shotgun pellets for your efforts.
In fact, there's only one proper response to getting flamed for stupidity on the internet, from victim, witness, or sitehost:
So if anything I wrote, here, or anywhere else, has your sphincter aflame, I urge you to fill one of those out, in haste, and send it to someone who cares.
Your mommy, your congressweasel, Bill Gates, or whomever.
And then carefully untwist your panties.
Then put on your footie pajamas, and go have some hot cocoa. Like you do.
So as a public service, this reminder to those who live at the left side of the intelligence bell curve (If you're not sure whether that's you, ask your friends. If you have no friends, consider that a "Yes".):
And if you don't think before you post, I'm sure someone will remind you.
Kinetically.
You can try facts and logic, and avoid a lot of butthurt on the 'net.
Or, you can learn to treat for shock from bleeding out your shredded ass, after being target practice for people who enjoy your plight, and buy electrons by the metric fuckton.
Your call.
Have a nice weekend. Even if you're a dumbass.
