A woman who was the victim of a horrific medical accident by National Health Service staff is being used as an example by hospitals to show how lessons can be learned from grave medical mistakes that affect patients.
Gina, as the patient is known, had to have her leg amputated after staff members at Doncaster Royal Infirmary in England accidentally injected it with disinfectant in 2013. The 67-year-old grandmother was undergoing surgery when a catheter wire was accidentally knocked to the floor and caused a mix-up with the disinfectant, reports the Mirror. No one reportedly noticed anything was wrong until Gina began screaming in pain and her skin turned blotchy and peeled off. She had to be sedated for two months and nearly lost her life.
Gina is now the subject of a YouTube video called “The Human Factor: Learning from Gina’s Story,” which has been created by Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in an effort to increase awareness of best practices, reports Metro.
More than 10,000 serious incidents and 12,000 avoidable hospital deaths are reported to NHS England each year, according to the Department of Health.
“We worked closely with Gina and her husband to make an educational video called Gina’s Story that drives home the importance of patient safety and our safety culture and we can’t thank them enough for helping us with this,” said Sewa Singh, Medical Director at Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals. “The inspiring educational video was shared widely both within the organisation [sic], and to other hospitals as we wanted to ensure that no one else goes through the same experience.”
In the video, Gina urges hospital staff to learn from this error and not let it happen again.
“I woke up and I went, ‘what’s wrong here?’ I tried to sit up and I couldn’t. Then it hit me I’d lost my leg,” Gina said. “I had to come to terms with it. Everything was a challenge. They had to hoist me out of bed to put me into a chair.”
She continued, “I’m 67, I’ve got 20 years left. I’ve got to try and make a life. This must not happen again.”
Photo Credit: Metro, YouTube
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