An 8-year-old boy died in hospital after taking ADHD medication, mixed by a pharmacist, which was over 1,000 times the prescribed dosage. His family learned later that the pharmacist who made the fatal error had not faced any repercussions. Instead of taking the usual .03 mg, the child ingested 30 mg. RT reports: On Halloween 2015, Jake Steinbrecher took his Clonidine, a medication he had been taking for some time with no problem for treating his ADHD. However, instead of taking his usual .03mg dosage, he took 30mg and was then hospitalized for brain swelling. “He immediately started having reactions to it,” Jake’s mother, Caroline Steinbrecher, told KMGH. While some believe the pharmacist merely made a mistake, Steinbrecher disagrees. “It wasn’t a mistake,” she told KMGH. “It was sentinel error.” A sentinel error is defined as “unexpected occurrences involving death or serious physical or psychological injury, or the risk thereof” and includes problems such as infant abduction, rape in an acute-care setting and surgery on the wrong body part. After Jake was discharged from hospital, he seemed fine. However, in June 2016, he had to return to the hospital, where he died on June 8. While the autopsy report hasn’t been [...]
