Post-Surgical Drip Solution: Nurses Should Have Heeded Complaints of Burning Pain

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

  Quick Summary: The court laid the blame on the nurses. The physician ordered a Bunnell’s irrigation solution dripped on the gauze dressing over the patient’s surgical wound for twenty-four hours after the surgery.

  According to the court record in the Court of Appeal of Louisiana, a pharmacy student extern at the hospital negligently mixed the solution with almost one-hundred times the proper strength, that is, with 47% glacial acetic acid, rather than .49%.

  The patient suffered serious complications to the surgical site on his finger, had to have numerous follow-up surgeries, and ultimately lost the finger.

  In the resulting malpractice lawsuit, there were multiple defendants, including the student pharmacist, her university, her pharmacy preceptor at the hospital, the hospital, the physicians, etc.

  In sorting through the maze of complexity it faced, the court was compelled to lay much of the blame on the nurses who cared for this patient.

  The nurses did not and could not directly know the irrigation solution was defective. But the patient repeatedly complained of burning pain in his arm. According to a nurse expert witness who testified, the post-op nurses should have known this particular solution is supposed to have a soothing effect and is not supposed to cause pain or burning. And the patient’s discomfort did not go away when they gave Demerol and Percocet.