What happened
Actor Dennis Quaid, whose newborn twins nearly died last year after being given an accidental drug overdose by hospital staff, launched a campaign against medical mistakes during an interview with the CBS news program "60 Minutes” scheduled to be broadcast Sunday. "These mistakes that happened to us are not unique ... they happen in every hospital, in every state in this country," said Quaid, 53, in early releases of the interview. “It's bigger than AIDS. It's bigger than breast cancer. It's bigger than automobile accidents, and yet no one seems to really be aware of the problem." (Reuters)
What the commentators said
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The Quaids are clearly not going to back down on this one, said Sarah Hall in E! News. Cedars-Sinai has acknowledged its mistakes and revised its policies. It’s also retraining staff working with heparin and other high-risk drugs. “Still, that's not good enough for the Quaids, who are making it their mission to draw attention to how commonplace medical mistakes are.”
The hospital’s reaction was the most “troubling” thing about the family’s description of the ordeal, said Tara Parker-Hope in The New York Times’ Well blog. “The Quaids say nobody called them to alert them about the mistake. Instead, when they showed up at the hospital early the next morning, they were met by hospital ‘risk management’ officials. And their babies, whose blood had turned the consistency of water, were bruised and bleeding profusely—one was even losing blood through the belly button.”
This just goes to show, said Angie Felton in the ParentDish blog, sometimes a mother’s intuition is the best way to know how best to protect your child. Kimberly Quaid had a feeling something had gone wrong when the twins were in the hospital being treated for infections. The staff told her all was well at 9 p.m., but she jotted down, “something happened to babies!” And the next morning they found out she was right.
