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Medical Mistake Kills Everett Woman

March 23, 2005

On Tuesday, a medical error at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, Washington cost an Everett woman her life. The hospital admitted their mistake.

Mary McClinton, 69, of Everett, Washington, went to Virginia Medical Center to have a brain aneurysm repaired. The surgery was not supposed to take long, and Ms. McClinton's family expected her home shortly. And after the surgery, the doctors pronounced the procedure a success.

Ms. McClinton died after she was mistakenly injected with a highly toxic antiseptic, chlorhexidine. Apparently, a technician administering the injection was supposed to inject Ms. McClinton with a harmless dye, used for x-rays, into a leg artery.

In an effort to save her life, the doctor amputated Ms. McClinton's leg. However, the antiseptic had attacked Ms. McClinton's organs and tissues and was causing her internal systems to shut down. She suffered kidney failure and a stroke as a result. She was soon unconscious and on a ventilator. She died early Tuesday, November 24, 2004.

The hospital responded by admitting, and not covering up, the mistake. Soon after discovering the accident, a memo was sent out to all hospital staff regarding Ms. McClinton's dire situation. The memo was sent out before Ms. McClinton even died. However, the memo provided detail of the incident to just explain what had gone wrong.

That memo apparently touched the McClinton family deeply. "That's a very strong piece of paper written by a really wonderful doctor who feels just as strongly about this as we do," said Steven McClinton.

The hospital did not fire the technician who caused the mistake, but instead took the person off duty and are in the process of retraining the entire medical staff.

After an investigation, the hospital concluded that the incident did not result from carelessness or recklessness, but a problem with the system that allowed the two solutions to be mixed up.

Apparently the hospital recently switched from using a brown iodine antiseptic to a colorless version that's better at killing germs. The marker dye is also clear, and the syringe was filled from an unlabeled cup containing the antiseptic instead. Both solutions were on the same table during Ms. McClinton's surgery. The hospital has since changed the protocol whereby both solutions will not be placed on the same table.