This nurse was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence for causing the death of a patient in 2017 in the rheumatology department of the Sainte-Marguerite day hospital in Marseille.
A nurse from the Marseille Public Hospitals Assistance (AP-HM) was sentenced on Monday to 12 months in prison, suspended, for involuntary manslaughter by the Marseille Criminal Court, for having administered 1000 times the prescribed dose of adrenaline to a patient, causing her death.
The judgment, lower than the prosecution’s demands, which had requested a 15-month suspended prison sentence, does not provide for damages against her. Admitted on September 5, 2017 to the rheumatology department of the Sainte-Marguerite day hospital, the victim, aged 47, was to undergo a fifth injection to treat rheumatoid arthritis. After an allergic episode, she suffered anaphylactic shock, quickly treated by an intern supervised by a senior doctor.
Based on the protocol established for this type of situation, the intern prescribed an injection of 20 micrograms of adrenaline. But the nurse, who had arrived a few months earlier, administered 20 milligrams, or 1,000 times more, in this case the four vials of five milligrams present on the emergency cart.
Dosage error
The patient was transferred to intensive care, and the dosage error was not revealed until the following day. The woman died on September 9. The nurse, now retired, maintained in court in July that she had heard the intern talk about “milligrams”but for the head of department, this dosage “cannot exist”the recommended dose in case of cardiac arrest being one milligram. Asked to know “what dosage (would have appeared fatal to him)”the defendant had answered that she did not know, having never used adrenaline before in her career. “They told me ‘hurry up, hurry up!'”.
The nurse’s lawyer, Philippe Bonfils, has for the moment ruled out appealing this judgment. “I don’t think we’ll appeal, the hearing was trying for the victim’s family, but also for my client”he told AFP.
“At the same time, it is difficult for her to bear the burden of responsibility alone, she is only one link in a deficient organisation. It would not have been shocking if the hospital had also been sued.”he added, specifying that the AP-HM was ordered to pay damages to the victim’s family but has appealed.
