Elder Law

Medication Patch Overdose Leads to Wrongful Death Lawsuit

By Levin & Perconti

Nursing homes are charged with providing complete care to vulnerable elderly residents. That means that nursing home employees must provide physical care (like helping residents get in and out of bed) as well as medical care. While advanced medical care requires the expertise of hospital professionals, nursing home staff members often still perform more routine tasks, like controlling resident medications.

Severe harm and even death often results when the employees are negligent when administering patient drugs.

That is exactly what happened according to a new nursing home lawsuit filed against the Woodland Care Center according to About Lawsuits. The wrongful death suit stems from the death of a resident at the facility caused by an overdose of a pain patch known as fentanyl. The medication was intended to handle the resident?s pain during his recovery from bone cancer. The fentanyl gel in question is 100 times stronger than morphine.

The medication is administered through a patch that is supposed to be applied once every three days. However, the nursing home staff caregiver failed to follow that directive. Instead three pain patches where used on the resident?s neck at once. As a result of the medication error the victim suffered cardiac arrest. He was found on the floor of his nursing home room and transferred to a local hospital where he died six days later.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on November 25, 2010 (boomark / email).