Switched babies

Patient Safety Tip of the Week Archive

Here’s a topic where we really are asking our readers for their input and opinions. Mercy Medical Center in Williston, North Dakota had an incident this past September in which the wrong baby was given to a mother at discharge. The error was recognized within hours and both babies were reunited with their correct mothers promptly. Last week Mercy Medical held a press conference in which they transparently disclosed the details of the incident (maintaining patient confidentiality, of course) and the results of the subsequent root cause analysis (RCA). We applaud Mercy Medical for their actions. Not only do their actions bring credibility to themselves but they also raise the issue for all other hospitals to address. We challenge each and every hospital to honestly answer the question “Could that have happened here?”. Most will probably say “I really don’t know. Certainly the human error element could happen here. But I’m not sure if our safety net and safety systems would prevent the actual adverse outcome.”