Hospira Faulty Medical Pump Suit

Quote

Anonymous

Guest
Late WVTF music director’s family sues over his 2011 Death

The children of Seth Williamson, a longtime music director and host at pubradio WVTF in Roanoke, Va., have filed a lawsuit against a medical manufacturing company over his 2011 death, reports the Roanoke Times.

The complaint says that following hernia surgery, Williamson received more than five times the prescribed amount of an analgesic medication and died a short time later of a “massive” overdose.

The family contends a medication pump was faulty. They are suing Hospira Inc., which made the pump, and Abbott Laboratories Inc., which once owned Hospira. Both are based in the Chicago suburbs. Representatives of the companies had no comment.

Williamson had worked at the station since 1983. He was 62 when he died.


Hr4u
 






The products liability action seeks $10 million in damages. A trial date has been set for Jan. 12, according to Robert Hall, a Reston attorney who represents Williamson’s family.
Named as defendants are Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Illinois, the manufacturer of the pump, and Abbot Laboratories Inc., which the lawsuit said once owned Hospira.

Lawyers for Hospira and Abbott had asked Urbanski to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing in part that the pump came with adequate written warnings about the possible dangers in its programming by health care workers. The companies also suggested that failure to adequately monitor Williamson at the hospital played a role in his death.

LewisGale Hospital Montgomery is not named as a defendant in the case.
In a Dec. 19 opinion, Urbanski opted not to throw the case out, writing that there were factual disputes better left to a jury. “For example, it is clear to the court that reasonable minds could differ as to whether the instructions and labels on [the medication pump] were adequate,” the opinion stated.The judge also cited a dispute as to whether nurses at LewisGale were aware of the potential dangers of misprogramming the concentration of Dilaudid administered by the pump.According to the lawsuit, Williamson died of a massive overdose after getting five times the amount of painkillers he was supposed to receive from the device.

In his opinion, Urbanski also allowed the testimony of several expert witnesses, including one who is expected to opine that “the warnings contained on the side of the pump and in the operator’s manual were insufficient from a human factors perspective, and that the pump’s on-screen instructions were misleading and lacked an adequate warning of the dangers of misprogramming the wrong drug concentration.”

HR
 
























Sounds like the pump worked OK. Seems like it was a programming mistake. Still feel badly for the family of the deceased and the health workers though. If the hospital can show that the PCA 3 instructions were vague and misleading, then more power to them.
 






It's doesn't matter, If Attorney took the case on Percentage basis, then they WILL get some form of settlement Attorneys won't take ANY case unless they are very certain they could prevail Its sounds to me like it was a vague operation manual and on screen instructions I hope they get the $10 Million from HSP This company Hospira has a BAD,BAD reputation! It gets worse every day :eek:
 












If it were that blatant (which it is not) there would be reason for concern. The PCA has been out in the field since 1988. The PCA 3 since the early 2000's. You think with over 100,000 of these devices in the field the FDA should recall of them . Not going to happen.
When an unfortunate event happens you must blame someone. In this case the company has deeper pockets and would be more willing to settle out of court. Human factors is a much bigger deal today than it was 15 years ago but all the labeling in the world can't help if nurses aren't trained properly or are over worked.
It is a very sad situation for the patient and his family. My condolences for their loss.
 






The blatant disregard I refer to is not just this one lone incident This is just one of HUNDREDS of documented actions against Hospira by a WIDE variety of assorted Public,Federal and Private
entities No need to explain, it's all right here and on the web along with many more just waiting to surface I say FIRE SOME VP LEVEL and shake it up again This will/did happen Its all done quietly under guise of retirement or taking other job offer Kearny didn't leave on his own, He was forced to along with several others in the last decade You don't know what goes down in Chicago on the Brass side Only bad thing is it doesn't matter because they milked the shit out of HSP and walk with Mad Gwop

Retired Hospira HR Manager
 












Anonymous said:
If it were that blatant (which it is not) there would be reason for concern. The PCA has been out in the field since 1988. The PCA 3 since the early 2000's. You think with over 100,000 of these devices in the field the FDA should recall of them . Not going to happen.
When an unfortunate event happens you must blame someone. In this case the company has deeper pockets and would be more willing to settle out of court. Human factors is a much bigger deal today than it was 15 years ago but all the labeling in the world can't help if nurses aren't trained properly or are over worked.
It is a very sad situation for the patient and his family. My condolences for their loss.
Click to expand...

You are forgetting that both the hardware and software may have been changed since the introduction of PCA 3. So why fix something that ain't broke? There are lots of reasons: parts obsolescence, cost reduction pressures, expansion of the software to include new drugs or added languages for foreign markets, etc. Also they may have changed the labels or instructions recently. I myself cannot fathom how they made an error of 5x. A mistake of 10x is believable because skipping a decimal point is easy, but 5x? It takes some thinking to come up with a number like that. There may be more to this story than a simple typo-error in programming the pump. Anyway, lets not assume this product or its user's manual has been static for the last 10+ years.

When I first heard about this overdose death, I didn't think it could be PCA 3 because of its barcode reader. It is the only pump at Hospira that has this feature and its whole purpose to automate the data entry for the pump. I was also under the impression the pump software safety limits would not allow an excessive dosage. But in this particular case they used a custom vial, which required manual inputs for the programming.

One question I would ask is how long have these custom vials been in use? Any prior complaints or problems with its workflow instructions?

Anyway, I sincerely wish this had never happened.
 






Unless you are just speculating on actual model involved, You seem informed on information not available to public. Interesting What qualifications do you have to speculate this scenario you describe

:eek:HR:eek:
 






For dangerous conditions, all infusion pumps have some unmistakable way alerting, such as buzzers or flashing lights, etc. These are for air in line, occlusion, battery depleted, etc. The ads for PCA 3 states there is a wireless link and a drug library to prevent over medication errors. But what indicates this? If there is a screen message, what is the message and how is it presented? Is there supposed to be a red light come on or a beeper sound when a hazardous dosage is punched in?
 






Ok since you won't answer, I would BET you were either a grunt in an assembly plant that was shut down OR a lowly Device rep bumped. Nevertheless, your input has substance don't get too carried away

:eek:HR:eek:
 






As a HR guy I would advise you not to bet. You have been told what to do and when to do it throughout your career. Anyone who has had senior positions in Abbott/ Hospira level 4 and above know HR is there to advise but not to make any significant decisions. That being said a strength of your discipline is diplomacy. What happened ??
 






Obviously you aren't aware of the different levels at Hospira including HR Upper level HR has direct input in matters on a corporate level What's level 4 Never heard of that ? I was a grade 24. A plant worker was grade 12 assemblers were grade 14 Reps were grade 16-18 Explain yourself
 
























Top Bottom
Back
Quote