Seven times the amount

Massive Overdose: Nursing Home Resident (86) Killed

Instead of six tablets per week, the man from Styria received six tablets per day.(Bild: Md Arif Babu - stock.adobe.com)

A nursing home resident (86) in Styria suffered an agonizing death after being given seven times the number of pills he had actually been prescribed. A nurse and his family doctor were convicted in Graz of grossly negligent homicide. They had failed to exercise the necessary oversight.

“My father died a miserable death,” said the deceased’s son during the first trial just over a year ago at the Graz Regional Criminal Court. The accused nurse and the responsible family doctor had pleaded not guilty. “A chain of unfortunate circumstances,” the defense attorney said at the time.

Six tablets a day instead of one
To explain: The dosage prescribed by the family doctor for the seriously ill 86-year-old was “1 tgl WD: 6 pieces”; the nurse misinterpreted this as “1x daily repeating dose of 6 pieces” and recorded it as such in the medical records. As a result, the 86-year-old received six tablets per day (!) instead of the correct dosage of one tablet per day, spread over six days a week. 

The 86-year-old died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by the overdose. Because the family doctor did not monitor the administration and the nurse did not consult with the family doctor despite the high dosage, both were sentenced to four months’ probation and fines of 28,000 and 9,000 euros, respectively. 

“Mistakes happen”
The defendants appealed the ruling. The case was heard on Tuesday at the Higher Regional Court in Graz. “Where people work, mistakes happen—including errors in communication. They aren’t computers,” explained the physician’s defense attorney. His colleague asked for a more lenient sentence for the nurse, who had worked for several decades without complaint. 

The appellate court saw it differently and dismissed the appeals. “Even to a medical layperson, a dosage of six tablets a day would have seemed odd.” No questions were asked, nor was any consultation sought. These actions were deemed to have been the cause of the nursing home resident’s death, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Thus, the original verdict stands. It is now final and cannot be appealed.