You have to overcome cultural barriers to work in some fields. Not questioning an order is okay when you work at a grocery store, its not okay when you work in an ER.

This woman should definitely loose her license to practice. There were so many mistakes made:
1) I’m not a nurse, but AFAIK Dilantin isn’t an uncommon drug in the ER. She should have had a concept about what dosage range to give. She obviously didn’t.
2) She had to give thirty-two vials of a medication.
3) She cleared out, I think, three Pyxis machines to get the vials.
4) She had two give it in two IV bags.

Unfortunately, it looks like her license has not been suspended nor does she have any disciplines.

I suspect the employer fired the doc for contacting the family directly. for our ER group, that would be a serious violation of our risk management procedures. A meeting with the family can be arranged for a disclosure or discussion (or apology) but a personal, out-of-channel phone call would *not* be a good idea. I doubt I would fire a doc for it, but if I told a doc not to, and he did anyway, it would not be beyond the pale.

He may win his suit by playing the whistle-blower card.

Nurses really need to have more discipline that what they obviously receive. They blame everyone except themselves when they make a mistake.

Have you ever taken responsibility for anything?”

CJDlite when do you ever have anything constructive to say? Is being anonymouse devil’s advocate how you get your rocks off? Have you ever been a health care professional? Have you ever even bothered to look at what is wrong with the system and how the present system of law does nothing to correct it? The nurse rightly lost her job and probably will never work in this field again. A husband lost his wife and and children lost their mother. The sad fact is if this did go to trial (it didn’t) you can bet the ER doc would have his ass sued…even though he did nothing wrong. When will YOU ever be anything more than a fly on the wall?

Safe systems and doublechecks are not a substitute for critical thinking and independent judgment.

In any case, according to the article, none of her coworkers thought to question her, even though they saw she was searching all over the hospital for those 32 vials of Dilantin. So a doublecheck might well have failed in this case.

I for one would like to see a happy medium between blaming every individual involved in an error and excusing every error as a systems problem.

All errors are not created the same; some are more egregious than others.

Have you ever taken responsibility for anything?