The Fountainview nursing home in Eldorado, Illinois was guilty of multiple medication errors that led to the emergency hospitalization of one of their residents.
Before any medication is delivered to any nursing home resident, nurses are trained to ask themselves 5 questions:
Is this the right patient?
Is this the right medication?
Is this the right dosage?
Is this the right form of the medication?
Is this the right time?
If nursing home and hospital personnel diligently followed the procedure of verifying and confirming the answers to these questions, medication errors would be dramatically reduced.
Unfortunately, because of a failure to follow this standard in medication protocol, one of the residents at the Fountainview nursing home was hospitalized with life-threatening upper gastrointestinal bleeding after receiving the wrong dosage of his anti-clotting medication for over a week.
According to the report, the man’s physician ordered a change in medication in late December of last year. The Fountainville administration failed to properly document the change on the patient’s medication records. When one of the nurses noted a discrepancy between the prior orders and the medication on the prescription cart, she replaced the updated prescription with the older prescription.
The error went unnoticed for over a week, when an emergency hospitalization to a local Eldorado, Illinois hospital revealed the medication error. Thankfully, the resident recovered and is now receiving the proper medication.
If you have a loved one who has been injured due to a medication error that occurred in an Illinois nursing home, he or she may be entitled to compensation for their pain and suffering. At my law offices I offer a free consultation for Illinois families who feel they have been the victims of medication errors in Illinois nursing homes.
Other blog posts of interest:
Medication protocols not followed at Chestnut Manor
Hospitalization results from medication error at Grove of Evanston