By LAURA SHARPE
A CORONER has criticised the training of a student nurse who gave a grandmother a fatal injection.
Christopher Sumner, said 91-year-old Edna Alker’s death “was a result of a preventable consequence of a necessary medical procedure.”
Mrs Alker, of Orrell, died in Whiston Hospital after receiving a fatal dose of potassium chloride from Rebecca Riley, a student from Liverpool John Moores University.
Mr Sumner said he was surprised by gaps in Riley’s medical knowledge given she was one-week away from completing her three- year nursing course.
He added: “I accept that nursing is a practical profession and that much of the training takes place within the work environment.
“However I am surprised to learn that a student, who is within one week of completing a three-year-course has such fundamental gaps in her knowledge.
“I am equally surprised to learn that a student with such gaps in her knowledge was allowed to administer drugs intravenously, albeit under supervision.”
After receiving the fatal dose Mrs Alker went into cardiac arrest and her brain suffered irreparable damage.
She died the following day.
Speaking afterwards, Mrs Alker’s daughter, Dr Gill Edwards, a consultant anaesthetist at Whiston Hospital where her mother died, said: “How a student nurse so close to qualifying injected an elderly patient with a drug she knows nothing about is astonishing.”
A spokesman for LJMU said: “National guidance on nursing education has changed since 2003 when this unfortunate incident occurred and such curricular changes are embedded in all of Liverpool John Moores University’s nursing programmes.”
St Helens and Knowsley NHS Trust said they were “reassured that the verdict did not identify any shortcomings in the hospital’s systems or procedures.”
(c) 2008 Liverpool Echo. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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