Infant Dies Due To Medication Error at Seattle Children's Hospital

It was just last year that another patient at Children's suffered a similar fate. Tammy Jarbo-Blakenship lost her son Michael on day after a routine visit for dental work. The family's lawyer Chris Davis says the drug should have never been given to Michael.

"With respect to Michael who was given an overdose of a drug called Fentanyl pain patch that his dentist had prescribed for the first time in her career," said Davis.

Davis says after Michael's death Children's Hospital promised the Blakenships it would establish new guidelines to prevent accidental overdoses.

"We were assured at the beginning of the lawsuit that they had taken changes, implemented changes to make sure this type of thing wouldn't happen again. I'm absolutely shocked. It's very tragic of course and absolutely unfortunate," said Davis.

The nurse who caused this latest overdose death is on leave while the hospital investigates. The Blankenship's lawyer Chris Davis says he doesn't want to alarm the public, but after dealing with Michael's death he's learned getting to the truth in these types of cases may be difficult.

"The number of deaths and errors you see really hasn't declined in my experience because the hospitals and medical profession goes to great lengths to keep it confidential," said Davis.

The Blankenship Family just settled their lawsuit against Children's as part of the deal; they're not allowed to talk specifically about the settlement. As for changes the letter from the hospital says from now on only Pharmacists and Anesthesiologists can draw up doses of calcium chloride unless there's a life-threatening emergency.

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• children's hospitals
• attorney
• lawyer
• medication error
• medical malpractice

[MsKbrightwell]

im addicted to fentanyl i get them from my doc 5 patches evry 15 days and i suck on them makes yu feel fucking amazin when yu eat a fentanyl patch but comeing of them sucks worse withdrawls ever

[jomsvikingur]

fentanyl from a dentist?! holy ****!!

it's already unusual for dentists to prescribe opiates for pain, except demerol or codeine, which are comparable to aspirin .. but fentanyl is 100x stronger than morphine & 40x stronger than heroin! It is very easy to OD on fentanyl