NHS

[Kellymama]

I'm looking for some advice regarding our latest experience.
On Saturday I took my 15 day old son to A&E as he visibly had an infection on his foot.
We were seen promptly, and although traumatising for both me and him he was cannulated and started IV antibiotics.

Two days later a doctor came in sheepishly at 7am to tell me that they had been giving my son the wrong dose medication. They'd been overdosing him!! He had to have further blood tests and other tests to make sure his little liver etc hadn't been affected by their mistake !!!

We were also moved to a room after this with no heating, we were both freezing cold all night, I'd asked several times to be moved or have a portable heater to which I was told ' rather too cold than too hot ' My already poorly son then began with a cold.

I'm just wondering if this is medical negligence ?? Is it worth sending a formal complaint ?

Thank you !

It should be self reported as a patient safety incident and investigated. You could speak to PALS to check that this process is being followed, Proving negligence is pretty hard and hopefully there will be no long term harm. With such a young child you have until 21 to make a case but that seems a long way away. You would be better focussing on getting your baby well and home for the time being. Hope you can be reassured soon and he recovers fully.

Pals to see if they are following the correct guidance for medication mistake, was it double checked? Most paeds wards double check paeds meds. Which antibiotic was it? There generally go off weight, so he will be given mg per kg of his weight,

Regarding being cold, ask them for blankets, they prob haven't got a room to move you to, all paeds wards are rammed as it's winter,

He will prob have picked up the cold over the last few days, you can't catch a cold, from being cold, it's an airborne virus which he could have picked up anywhere

I hope he's better soon

Did they explain exactly how the mistake with his medication had occurred and to what degree he was overdosed? There’s a big difference between giving 3.8 mls instead of 3.5mls because the handwriting was difficult to read, and giving 300g or something instead of 300mg. It might be a simple as ‘he’s slightly below birthweight currently so his dose should have been a fraction lower than we calculated’.

Regardless of this, you cannot make any kind of ‘claim’ unless you actually incur costs as a result of the mistake (above and beyond what might reasonably have been expected with having an unwell child anyway).

And as others have pointed out, you cannot catch a cold from being cold. Ask them to measure the temperature of the room if you are concerned. It should be between 16 and 20. If it’s below 16 you may be able to get them to do something.

They never explained how it happened. I had to contact someone I know whose a peads nurse to get the correct information. The doctor who prescribed it lied to me instead of owning up to his mistake.

He was on 50 mg/kg every 6 hours when he should have been on 25 mg/kg every 8 hours.
They changed it but got it wrong again as they didn't change the hourly rate.

I'm not looking to claim anything . I want them to be retrained so this doesn't happen again!

In which case, as above, I would contact PALS and want to know exactly what procedure is being followed. You may also be able to find an email address or phone number got the patient safety team (or get a nurse to put you in contact).

Thank you for putting me on the right track !!
I'll definitely be contacting whoever I can to make this right!

Baby boy is much better . Luckily ❤️

So, prescribing, or administering the incorrect dose is probably negligent, whether that is because the weight was taken or recorded incorrectly, the calculation done incorrectly, a plain mistake like using the dose for a different age range, or formulation (IV is often different to oral), or the dose was read incorrectly by the person administering the medication.

To pursue a medical negligence claim you need to prove four things:

1. That a duty of care existed
2. That the duty of care was breached
3. That damage or harm occurred (as a result)
4. That the harm was foreseeable

Sounds like what happened meets 1 and 2, but maybe not 3, or 4.

I would say it still warrants a PALS complaint however, and to ask for the ward staff to put an "incident report" in, which will be risk assessed and evaluated to to see if any processes can be changed to reduce the likelihood of similar things happening in the future.

I will definitely be putting in a PALS complaint I think.
The ward staff aren't helpful at all, when I asked for information to put in a complaint they said they'd be back with it and never returned ( I asked 3 different members).
They also refused me his notes.

You could access his notes by making a dsar but it is probably better to wait until he has recovered.

The notes I can understand.....

A lot of people refer to them as the patient's notes....

In reality, they are the hospital's notes about a patient, they're written as a record, but also as a method of communication between health professionals.

For my patients I send them a direct copy of any clinic notes or letters and another to their GP, but the hospital records, it's generally better to allocate a time to sit and read through them with the patient so they can ask questions and get a better understanding of what the medical-ese language conventions actually mean.

You have to formally request medical records, they will have a process for this you can ask them for. Ditto the complaints procedure. I think negligence is a bit of a stretch, it's an error which unfortunately does happen but they recognised it, rectified it and told you about it. The cold room is annoying but as others said, right now most hospitals and services are pushed to the brink. I'd be complaining to your MP rather than the hospital.

I'll complain to both.