Wrong baby given drug; staff told to cut errors
Another medical mix-up has come to light, with a baby being wrongly injected with an antibiotic. News of the error emerged yesterday, hours after a health official had urged managers of public hospitals to avoid blunders.
A new mother mistakenly put her baby into another baby's cot at the Prince of Wales Hospital and a nurse gave her baby a dose of antibiotics meant for the second baby. The nurse did not follow the standard procedure of checking the baby's wrist tag before giving the injection.
The baby has not suffered any problems since the injection.
Undersecretary for Food and Health Gabriel Leung said managers of public hospitals should help frontline staff avoid blunders. Four have come to light in the past two weeks.
Professor Leung said it was clear that human negligence played a role in an incident at North District Hospital in which a terminally ill breast cancer patient was mistakenly injected with morphine meant to be taken orally. She died seven days later. The mistake was reported on Friday.
'The frontline staff should hold the patient-centred culture dear to their hearts. That would reduce the chance of blunders,' Professor Leung said. 'The management also has responsibility to manage risks, and to help frontline staff avoid making mistakes.'
He said most medical staff treated patients like their families, but he could not rule out isolated cases of avoidable errors.
On August 8, two babies at Queen Elizabeth Hospital were swapped at birth. Last Sunday, a nurse at the same hospital injected five newborns with an expired vaccine for protection against tuberculosis.
A Hospital Authority spokeswoman said a special task force was investigating the North District Hospital incident and would look into taking action - including any punishment - after the causes were known.
The two nurses involved in the incident were cautioned and are still at work.
To boost service standards and minimise the chance of blunders, a team of Australian experts began working with five public hospitals and two private hospitals in the city's first accreditation programme three months ago.
Surveyors from the Australian Council on Health Standards will assess the hospitals' patient safety, patient records, service outcomes, handling of medical incidents and staff training. Preliminary findings will be available in about a year.
Meanwhile, the undersecretary told a radio show host that he would be happy to take the first shot of swine flu vaccine, after a caller who said he was a health-care worker said it would boost the public's confidence in the shots if he and health minister York Chow Yat-ngok got the first jabs.
'I am not part of the [high-risk group] but if you think I can set a precedent I will [take the shot],' Professor Leung said.
His comment came after a Chinese University study found that only 47 per cent of public health-care workers wanted the jabs, with some fearing side effects and others simply not wanting inoculations.
The government plans to provide free swine flu vaccines for about two million people in high-risk groups, including the elderly, chronically ill, young children and all health-care workers.
Health officials have warned of a swine flu outbreak in the next few weeks when students return to schools.
