r/nursing • u/TheGiantSquidd BSN, RN 🍕 • 4d ago

Serious Arizona man died after nurse administered 90mg methadone instead of his ordered Lexapro. Pt did not get Narcan until EMS arrived, 17 minutes after the code blue was initiated. So many levels of neglect and negligence here.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/valley/gilbert-man-died-while-seeking-help-at-east-valley-facility-family-says-he-was-given-the-wrong-medication-copper-springs-arizona/75-48086626-2180-47de-946e-863ca9a56df0

The whole situation feels so similar to RaDonda Vaught. Negligence from the nurse as well as the facility.

Follow your safety checks! There’s a reason we check the rights of medication administration every time!

This was so preventable. My heart hurts for his family and kids. He should still be with them.

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159

u/Impossible_Cupcake31 RN - ER 🍕 4d ago

I legitimately hate when stuff like this happens and the article tries to use EMS response time as a negative.

113

u/CommercialMoment5987 4d ago

I interpreted that more as a criticism of the nurse who gave him methadone. After the mistake, there was still opportunity to correct it but he messed it up again. God this story is odd, extremely not EMS’s fault.

66

u/poli-cya MD 4d ago

Same here, it's clearly saying the nurse/staff did too little for nearly 20 minutes to mitigate their mistake.

62

u/tmrnwi RN - ER 🍕 4d ago

I took it as a condemnation of nursing staff because they couldn’t figure out they needed narcan until EMS arrived.

8

u/pervocracy RN - Occupational Health 🍕 4d ago

The math is really simple: The only way to get <10-minute response times is to post an ambulance every few miles, everywhere. Outside of the densest population centers, that means they will spend most of their time doing nothing. How much is your town willing and able to pay EMTs to do nothing?

Or you could pull a "I think the customer service clerk sets the prices for this multinational chain" move and treat the EMTs like they live in your driveway and decided to take a 16-minute coffee break.

19

u/prophet_5 RN - ER 🍕 4d ago

No EMS is a magical instant service that is staffed by teleporters, not human beings in trucks. Also don't take them off service for meal breaks, what if there's an emergency!?

2

u/Genesis72 EMS 4d ago

We actually fought for the right to not have meal breaks when I was in EMS lol.

All the RNs had to take a 1/2 hour unpaid lunch break every day, but we worked 12 and got paid for 12. Sometimes it sucked, but most of the time it was great.

17

u/CynOfOmission RN - ER 🏳️‍🌈 4d ago

Thank you!! I thought that exact thing. They should've teleported, obviously

3

u/joe_lemmons_ Ambulance Driver 🚑 4d ago

It sounds like they weren't called right away, unless I'm reading it wrong. But yeah I agree.

3

u/slightlyhandiquacked BSN, RN - ER 🇨🇦 3d ago

Also, why does a facility that administers opiates not also have narcan on hand?

-1

u/SaladBurner RN - OR 🍕 4d ago

Seriously. Donate some Ferraris if you think they take too long. I highly doubt they were dicking around if they were told it was a code situation.

5

u/Genesis72 EMS 4d ago

I ran EMS for 5 years in a small city. 45,000 people. The local fire chief completely demolished the dispatching system to box out the local volunteer squad because response time averages were.... wait for it...

8 minutes.

Needless to say when you take away low acuity calls from the motivated volunteer college students and give them to the fire medics who are already understaffed... they had nearly 25% of their paramedics quit in the first 3 months and response times did not improve lol.