Medical Error Stories 2011
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Shelton, Tribune reporterBob and Barb Malizzo, along with daughter Kristina Chavez and her son Adrian, visit their daughter Michelle Ballog's grave at Graceland Cemetery in Valparaiso, Ind. She died after a medical error was made during surgery. (Heather Charles/Chicago Tribune)Michelle Malizzo Ballog was nervous as
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hospital staff wheeled her into surgery to replace a temporary stent in her famous medical malpractice cases liver. In a procedure two weeks earlier, also at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, she had awakened too medication error stories 2015 early from the anesthesia, an unsettling experience. But this time she didn't wake up. Monitoring errors were made while she was under anesthesia, and Ballog, whose youngest daughter had turned 1 the
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day before, stopped breathing and suffered cardiac arrest on the operating room table. She lapsed into a coma and died nine days later at 39. Her parents and sister had no idea at first that Ballog's death was caused by preventable medical errors, of which the monitoring problem was only the first. When they found out, they were livid. Bob Malizzo, Ballog's father, remembers angrily asking
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doctors: "How could this happen?" To the family's astonishment, hospital officials did not duck their questions, cover up their mistakes or hide behind lawyers. Instead, they shared the tragic details. As a result, the family made a surprising decision of their own: They chose not to sue and joined the hospital's safety review committee to help the medical center avoid making such errors in the future. In their role as lay members of the committee, Malizzo, his wife, Barbara, and their daughter Kristina Chavez hear about medical errors and near-misses that occur at UIC and other hospitals, with the goal of helping to figure out how such mistakes can be avoided. They offer a unique perspective that often is lacking in meetings that typically focus on procedures, processes and practices. Sitting in his living room in Hobart, Ind., next to a pillow memorializing his oldest daughter, Malizzo explained the family's thinking in joining the panel: "We might be able to save someone's life." Patient safety experts praise the hospital for being transparent about the errors and said the case highlights the important role that patients and families can play in helping to fix a complex, intra
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MSN Index Bing NBCNews.com sites & shows: TODAY Nightly News Meet the Press Dateline Morning Joe Hardball Ed Maddow The http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43529641/ns/health-health_care/t/nurses-suicide-highlights-twin-tragedies-medical-errors/ Last Word msnbc Home US World Politics Business Sports Entertainment Health Tech Science Travel Local Weather Health care on NBCNews.com Search Advertise Nurse's suicide highlights twin tragedies of medical errors Kimberly Hiatt killed herself after overdosing a baby, revealing the anguish of caregivers who make mistakes Below: x Jump to discuss comments below discuss x Next medication error story in Health care 51-pound tumor removed from woman related Advertise Photo courtesy Lyn Hiatt Kimberly Hiatt, a longtime critical care nurse at Seattle Children's Hospital, committed suicide in April, seven months after accidentally overdosing a fragile baby. By JoNel Aleccia Health writer msnbc.com updated 6/27/2011 8:39:55 AM ET 2011-06-27T12:39:55 Print Font: + - Follow @JoNel_Aleccia medication error stories For registered nurse Kimberly Hiatt, the horror began last Sept. 14, the moment she realized she’d overdosed a fragile baby with 10 times too much medication. Stunned, she told nearby staff at the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital what had happened. “It was in the line of, ‘Oh my God, I have given too much calcium,’” recalled a fellow nurse, Michelle Asplin, in a statement to state investigators. In Hiatt’s 24-year career, all of it at Seattle Children’s, dispensing 1.4 grams of calcium chloride — instead of the correct dose of 140 milligrams — was the only serious medical mistake she’d ever made, public investigation records show. “She was devastated, just devastated,” said Lyn Hiatt, 49, of Seattle, Kim’s partner and co-parent of their two children, Eli, 18, and Sydney, 16. That mistake turned out to be the beginning of an unraveled life, contributing not only to the death of the child, 8-month-old Kaia Zautner, but also to Hiatt’s firing, a state nursing