Hospital Mistake Kills Woman
A pregnant woman died in South Florida Baptist Hospital two weeks ago because a nurse gave her an overdose of a common medicine, hospital officials said Wednesday.
Elisha Crews Bryant, 18, was seven months pregnant when she went to the hospital with early labor pains, family members said. A doctor ordered magnesium sulfate, a common treatment to slow early labor.
But the nurse who gave Bryant an IV bag of the drug mistakenly gave her too much, hospital officials said. She got 16 grams when she should have gotten 4, said the family’s attorney, Doug Burnetti.
Bryant began having trouble breathing.
“I knew something wasn’t right,” said Bryant’s husband, Preston Bryant, 21. “I tried to tell them, and they wouldn’t listen.”
(This information was obtained from the Times)
Once they realized the mistake, doctors tried to save her but could not.
An overdose of magnesium sulfate can cause respiratory failure, low blood pressure and cardiac arrest.
The doctors delivered her son, Levi, by emergency caesarean section. He was in neonatal intensive care
Hospital officials called a news conference to acknowledge the mistake after a spokesman for the family blanketed news media Wednesday with e-mails blaming the hospital for Elisha Bryant’s death and asking the public for money to help with medical and child care expenses.
Because of health care privacy laws, hospital officials wouldn’t name Bryant as the patient. But Bill Ulbricht, the hospital’s chief operating officer, made it clear that Bryant died because of a hospital nurse.
A medical malpractice lawsuit is underway.
~Lisa Greene, Times Staff Writer
