Child facing surgeries after failed IV therapy: mom
Alberta Health Services has issued an apology to the mother of a three-year-old girl after the woman said her child’s hand was damaged by intravenous therapy following open-heart surgery.
Emmy Gunther, who has Down syndrome and is non-verbal, had the surgery on Jan. 16 at Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital and was expected to go home early this week.
Her mother, Jalena Gunther, said her child started suffering pain on Friday night but no one checked to see what was causing the problem.
She said a nurse realized the next morning that the IV had slipped out of her daughter’s vein and into the skin, burning it and leaving her arm swollen and her hand covered in blisters.
Gunther said Emmy will need up to four surgeries and it’s not yet clear if she will regain the full use of her hand.
She plans to launch a formal complaint and wants the incident investigated.
Gunther said she left Emmy with her mother to get some rest Friday night because her son is in the intensive care unit. The grandmother texted half an hour later to say something was not right.
“The nurses would come in and kind of look at her (Emmy), and then walk back out,” said Gunther. “Nothing was really ever done. In the middle of the night again, my mom said, ‘Where is the doctor? He hasn’t come. She’s still in pain. What’s going on?’ ”
Gunther said doctors and nurses told her it was a “major IV burn” that probably ran into her skin for hours. She wants the Stollery to apologize and “admit they did something wrong.”
“I want to see disciplinary action taken against the nurses that worked that night that didn’t follow protocol to check the IV every hour,” she said. “Their actions were negligent, their protocol, as I’ve been told, is they’re supposed to check IV sites every hour. It wasn’t checked all night.”
Alberta Health Services said in a statement that it’s “involved” with the family and is reviewing the care given to Emmy.
“AHS has started a quality review of the care. We are very sorry about the complication that this little girl has experienced. Our standards of care should not result in this type of complication for any of our patients,” the statement said.