An ER nurse sues after her emergency room visit

Saw the same thing happen at my hospital. I was called code blue to the CT suite. A woman had been given her contrast dye for a outpatient CT of her sinuses. She got short of breath and became a little hypotensive. Te radiologist had rushed in to save the day and pushed the cardiac dose of epi IV. 1 mg. IV! The lady of course developed crushing chest pain and had positive troponins. I had her maxed out on pressors for awhile, I seriously thought she was going to die. I asked the radiologist why he gave her so much epi and he said that they had all just re-certed in ACLS. Forget the fact that the correct response is posted all over the damn suite. Not sure if the lady ever found out what went wrong.

As Does the self-poicing in the legal community for such gods of litigation as John Edwards and Mike Nifong.

AH, the law of unintened consequences. I bet is was some silly policy made by the suits of the hospital that the radiologist take an ACLS course once every two years that he should not need to take. (leave the codes for the code team) If he hadn’t taken the course they probably would have wondered “what the f*** do we do now?” and then looked at the chart on the wall to find the dose of epi.

And yes Elliot, the legal profession has made it prohibitive to say “I am sorry”, “I f***** up”, or “He f***** up” As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

Anytime I think the feckless cowards of kevinmd can’t top themselves, they prove me wrong. Is there a counterweight to this ugliness; a blog of a doctor who addresses political issues and is not always concerned with only themself. Dr. Charles (who generally keeps his selfishness in check) and the Cheerful Oncologist both sound like good people, but they don’t address politics.

Epi is not the only viable tx, just the first (IV is an acceptable route, if it’s faster, as is endotracheal). The ACLS dose is not acceptable. I am shocked that someone didn’t get the proper dose (and that an experienced nurse would have to look it up) at an ED. I’ve worked at several, and at instacares and multispecialty clinics and it was always a standing order for the nurses, along with IM benadryl, O2, IV (code blue) if necessary before we got the doc. We could stack the epi. Then the doc could decide whether or not steroids were indicated.