55 at risk of AIDS

The article that I was reading in order to fulfill the requirements for this blog quickly got my attention when I noticed that on the same page, there was a smaller article entitled Bungle puts 55 at risk of AIDS. This article states that 53 patients and two staff members of one of Australia’s largest private radiology companies were all stuck with the same needle when they received a Pet Scan, which checks blood sugar, and it was recommended that they all be tested for HIV and Hepatitis B and C. The Accu-check Multicix, which is used for Pet Scans, contains several needles in a replaceable drum and the needles are switched manually. In this incident, the needle wasn’t switched from November to January of the following year.

At first, this article seemed surreal. After all the checks and double checks that we have in the United States, it is hard to imagine that something like this could even happen. This was clearly a case of miscommunication and lack of training. Unfortunately, everyone in the nursing field knows that miscommunication happens more often than a non-medical person would really like to know.

PET scans are used to determine the severity of cancers, neurological conditions and heart disease. Even with an apology letter, this kind of accident does not make up for the fact that these patients could now have AIDS because a nurse did not know proper procedures when operating the equipment. Because of her lack of training, these people, who have possibly lowered resistance anyway, have now been potentially exposed to even worse diseases. It is horrifying to think that this nurse didn’t even realize that what she was doing was incorrect until a staff member with diabetes told her. According to the article, the risk to the people stuck with a used needle is very small because, as it turned out, none of them had any communicable diseases like AIDS or Hepatitis.

Unfortunately, something like this can and does happen here in the United States. The article didn’t state how much training the nurse had, but to me, it sounded like she had a poor orientation. How can anyone be expected to do their job accurately without the proper training? Nonetheless, the nurse was probably fired and may have lost her license because she did not educate herself on something as simple as an accu-check machine by, say, reading the instruction manual or the side of the machine before she began to administer tests. We are all working so hard for our degrees but few of us realize how easily our licenses can be taken away because of bad training, miscommunication or simple negligence.