Man who died in oxygen tube mishap was left 'unsupervised' with student nurse

[davidc4430]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-01/stephen-herczeg-left-unsupervised-with-student-nurse/7983720

thats the way, when your backs against the wall, throw a student nurse under the bus!!

[icyfroth]

At least he died happy!

[imastawka]

Really??!!  Died happy??

A former Socceroo who died at an Adelaide Hospital after an oxygen tube was connected to his catheter was left in the care of an unsupervised student nurse, a coronial inquest has heard.

Wanna rethink that one?

[icyfroth]

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@imastawka wrote:

Really??!!  Died happy??

A former Socceroo who died at an Adelaide Hospital after an oxygen tube was connected to his catheter was left in the care of an unsupervised student nurse, a coronial inquest has heard.

Wanna rethink that one?

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Well yeah, I guess I do.

Stay away from Adelaide Hospital and their student nurses!

[johcaschro]

If people are blame-hunting, I'd like to pin the blame for this unfortunate incident on the system which doesn't provide enough funding and resources and which therefore results in nurses being so overloaded with work that they necessarily use student nurses as part of their (unpaid) work-force in order to cope.

and . . . so nurses often let others write their notes for them on the electronic records because there aren't enough computers (and time) to go around.  It takes more time to record medical notes electronically on a computer than it does to hand write them on paper (and of course, hand written on paper notes cannot be accidentally deleted)

This incident is only a symptom of a rather stressed out and ailing system where nurses are repeatedly asked (told) to "do more with less".

My response to this was "It reaches a stage where the only thing we can do with less, is less.")

[*tippy*toes*]

I will be interested to hear the results of the inquest. I can't help buy wonder if it was deliberate. A catheter in a male only has a visible tube of 4-6", often less depending on the brand, so there is no way it could be flapping around up near his head. It wouldn't even be flapping around out the side of the blankets. Oxygen tubing does not connect to a catheter. It is physically impossible, unless a connector is used.

The only reason there would be a connector on the oxygen tube would be if they wanted to make it longer, otherwise it would just been connected to the oxygen outlet on the wall/bottle. That said, the size of a connector used to extend the length of the oxygen tube is too small to go into a catheter. It would have fallen out. Also, the ends of catheters all look the same, regardless of brand. The student nurse would have learnt what they looked like within the first 3 months of uni.

If the student nurse was left unsupervised, then heads will roll, jobs will be lost and registrations cancelled. It doesn't matter how short staffed they are, students are there to observe and do very basic things, UNDER DIRECT SUPERVISION, like taking someone's temperature or measuring how much is in someone's catheter bag.

That would have been a very painful and very horrible death.