Infant's Family Speaks Out Following Hospital Deaths

INDIANAPOLIS -- Relatives of one of the infants who died because of an overdose of an anti-clotting drug at Methodist Hospital over the weekend told ABC's "Good Morning America" that they were upset about the error.

Lena and DeJuan Nelson, the grandmother and father of infant D'Myia Nelson, spoke to the show Tuesday morning.

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"You just don't make a mistake like that on someone's kid. They're supposed to be professionals," DeJuan Nelson said.

Hospital officials said six premature babies were accidentally given adult doses of heparin at Methodist's newborn intensive care unit. The mistake was caught and the six were treated, but two of them -- 5-day-old D'Myia Nelson and 2-day-old Emmery Miller and -- died Saturday, officials said.

One of the surviving newborns, Thursday Dawn Jeffries, was listed in critical condition Tuesday at Riley Hospital for Children.

The three other newborns were listed in critical but stable condition at Methodist Hospital and no longer showed ill effects from the heparin, according to hospital spokeswoman Jo Ann Klooz.

Emmery Miller's parents, in a news release distributed by an Indianapolis attorney, said they are deeply saddened by their loss.

The statement said Methodist's president assured Emmery's parents that he would conduct a thorough investigation "so that this type of event does not happen to any additional families."

"We trust that he will do the right thing in terms of the investigation in determining the cause of this so this terrible tragedy does not occur again," Emmery's parents said in the release.

Hospital officials offered to pay funeral expenses for Emmery and D'myia. The hospital also would offer to pay for family counseling and provide financial restitution to all six families affected, said Sam Odle, president and CEO of Methodist Hospital, which is part of Clarian Health Partners.

"We are acutely aware that nothing can adequately compensate these families for their loss," Odle said.

Odle also revealed that in 2001, a similar overdose of the drug was given to two patients in the hospital's Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. They recovered, he said.

None of the six families has talked to the hospital yet about possible compensation, Odle said.

"We would handle each family on an individual basis," Odle said. "We will make sure that the families are (as) satisfied with the outcome as we possibly can."

Hospital Makes Changes After Deaths

Odle said human and procedural errors were to blame for the overdoses.

Heparin arrives at the hospital in premeasured vials and is placed in a computerized drug cabinet by pharmacy technicians. When nurses need to administer the drug, they retrieve it from a specific drawer, which then locks again.

Early Saturday morning, a pharmacy technician with more than 25 years' experience accidentally took the wrong dosage -- vials of 10,000 units of heparin -- from inventory and stocked it in the drug cabinet in the newborn intensive care unit, Odle said. Five nurses, who are accustomed to only one dosage of heparin -- 10 units -- being available, then administered the wrong dose.

The adult and infant doses have similar packaging, officials have said.

Starting immediately, Odle said, all Clarian hospitals -- which also include Indiana University and Riley Hospital for Children -- will no longer keep vials of 10,000 units of heparin in inventory.

"What we're doing is removing the high-dose heparin from small vials and putting them in injectable syringes so that the packaging is so distinguishably different that a nurse cannot make a mistake," said Methodist Hospital president and CEO Sam Odle.

Also, all newborn and pediatric critical care units will require a minimum of two nurses to validate any dose of heparin, and two pharmacy workers will be required to check the drugs being loaded into the cabinet. And nursing units will receive an alert when a change in packaging or dose is entered in the drug cabinet.

In addition, all employees will be required to sign a document about the importance of correct drug administration by Sept. 23.

The nurses who administered the adult dosages to the babies and the pharmacy technician who stocked the cabinet with the dosages are receiving counseling and are expected to return to work, 6News reported.

The hospital planned another press conference Tuesday evening to update the status of the surviving newborns and measures the hospital is taking because of the deaths.