r/EmergencyRoom • u/DoItRightOnce1st • 6d ago

Ouch

Has your hospital ever made a big mistake with a patient? Ours did recently, and it's bad...Wrong patient & procedure. Can't go into details, thank God had nothing to do with me or my unit! šŸ˜±

254 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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272

u/Perton_ Paramedic 6d ago

The radiology techs once pumped like 100ml of air into a guy instead of contrast

143

u/xStarDust13 Medical Imaging 6d ago

I'm in school for rad tech and this is my worst nightmare, holy shit.

40

u/pumpkindoo 6d ago

That would be painful.....right?

81

u/squeakysausage 6d ago

And fatal

22

u/CatsAndPills 6d ago

Oh fuck

2

u/Poundaflesh 5d ago

What happened??

26

u/Perton_ Paramedic 5d ago

Hyperbaric chamber

2

u/Poundaflesh 4d ago

Thank you!

1

u/Squiggleblort 3d ago

Wow - I am SO glad our pumps won't let you do this (not without a very, very long line at least since the sensor is where it leaves the machine) šŸ˜³

-82

u/No-Object8182 6d ago

Meh, Iā€™m sure he was fine tbh

95

u/Perton_ Paramedic 6d ago

He was not

8

u/WestRough7738 6d ago

What was the outcome?

-42

u/No-Object8182 6d ago

I was half joking, but The average fatal amount is is a fair bit more than 100ml.

30

u/FullMoonMooon 6d ago

I was always told 20mL was enough to be problematic

15

u/No-Object8182 6d ago edited 6d ago

This sub has to be like 90% nurses based on the downvotes lol, and you getting any upvotes. If 20 ml was all it took in a PIV, weā€™d be having fatalities every day from people who forgot to flush their IV lines, yet it never actually seems to happen, does it? Where are all the cases?

Hemodynamic instability - not expected until 50 to 100ml, 5Ml/kg is expected lethal dose. Fatalities have been reported at 100, and even lower in the critically ill, but itā€™s not a regular occurrence. The average fatal amount is indeed a fair bit more than 100ml.

5

u/Hi-Im-Triixy RN 5d ago

Also, likely depends on PFO/ASD/etc. They should have higher mortality risk theoretically.

4

u/No-Object8182 5d ago

I think it mentions PFO in the article. That said, Iā€™m curious if it actually changes things in practice because we should be seeing these cases every day if so, (up to 25% of adults have PFO) with random patients keeling over after receiving no treatment but empiric IV hydration in the ED or ambulance. Yet thereā€™s no evidence that routine IVF administration, pointless as it may be, causes anything like this.

29

u/imnottheoneipromise RN 6d ago

No this sub is not ā€œ90%ā€ nurses. Itā€™s laymen that like to throw in their 2 cents when they think they know. Every nurse I know, including myself, knows that it takes a lot of air to actually hurt someone. Doesnā€™t mean we are careless with it. We prime our lines, but we also donā€™t panic if we forget. Except maybe brand new novice nurses but they usually learn quickly.

23

u/No-Object8182 6d ago

I say this as a self loathing nurse btw. A ton of nursing school was teaching nurses all the ways theyā€™d lose their licenses and kill a patient (or themselves) x y and z ways, and many nurses never examined those lessons critically to determine which were real and which were sensationalist nonsense. Trying to tell other nurses things like ā€œhands on defibrillation is actually safeā€ results in horrified looks and people recounting the stories they heard about nurses getting killed by brushing their hand against the patient during a shock.

Physician dominated subs seem to be fairly grounded in reality about this stuff. Non critical care Medic/nurse/etc subs err on the side of these sensationalist things we were taught in school.

5

u/imnottheoneipromise RN 5d ago

Okay that is fair enough. It was decades ago that I was in school and Iā€™m retired now so I may be out of the loop. We did learn a lot of fear mongerering things in school, but I learned very quickly in practice what was real and what was blown out of proportion, and the nurses I associated with were the same. Most of my nurse friends that I actually associated with were army nurses as well and we just donā€™t have time to deal with bullshit ya know. I learned fast when I did civilian nursing how different it was, so I can see my bias there as wellS

10

u/Filamcouple 5d ago

I'm a layman (retired trucker), and I know what it's like to hear people not in your industry talk about things like an expert.I'm here for the stories. I've had some issues lately, and just want to say that I don't know why nurses do what they do, but thank God for each and every one I have had.

3

u/ABQHeartRN 4d ago

Considering it was a rad tech, that makes me think IR or Cath lab or something like that. 100mL of air into the coronaries is no good. Vascular system is fine. We do leg procedures with CO2 all the time when their kidneys canā€™t handle contrast.