Florida Nurse Malpractice: Negligence May Have Contaminated 1,850 Patients

UPDATED: Oct 21, 2024

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UPDATED: Oct 21, 2024Fact Checked

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Jeffrey Johnson

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Jeffrey Johnson is a legal writer with a focus on personal injury. He has worked on personal injury and sovereign immunity litigation in addition to experience in family, estate, and criminal law. He earned a J.D. from the University of Baltimore and has worked in legal offices and non-profits in Maryland, Texas, and North Carolina. He has also earned an MFA in screenwriting from Chapman Univer...

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Mary Martin

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Mary Martin has been a legal writer and editor for over 20 years, responsible for ensuring that content is straightforward, correct, and helpful for the consumer. In addition, she worked on writing monthly newsletter columns for media, lawyers, and consumers. Ms. Martin also has experience with internal staff and HR operations. Mary was employed for almost 30 years by the nationwide legal publi...

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UPDATED: Oct 21, 2024

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It’s all about you. We want to help you make the right legal decisions.

We strive to help you make confident insurance and legal decisions. Finding trusted and reliable insurance quotes and legal advice should be easy. This doesn’t influence our content. Our opinions are our own.

Editorial Guidelines: We are a free online resource for anyone interested in learning more about legal topics and insurance. Our goal is to be an objective, third-party resource for everything legal and insurance related. We update our site regularly, and all content is reviewed by experts.

UPDATED: Oct 21, 2024

Advertiser Disclosure

It’s all about you. We want to help you make the right legal decisions.

We strive to help you make confident insurance and legal decisions. Finding trusted and reliable insurance quotes and legal advice should be easy. This doesn’t influence our content. Our opinions are our own.

UPDATED: Oct 21, 2024Fact Checked

A nurse at Broward General Hospital in Fort Lauderdale may have contaminated over 1,850 patients by using the same IV bag for different purposes. How something like this could occur in this day and age is almost unfathomable. The nurse’s negligence has the potential to injure thousands of people who expected competent care and medical malpractice lawsuits against the hospital are likely.

Flagrant behavior

According to a news report from NBC 6 Miami, nurse Qui Lan, who had been employed by Broward General Hospital for seven years, may have used the same IV bag on different patients on more than one occasion – even though she knew that the hospital required switching out old IV bags for new ones on each new patient. Hospital officials say that she may have used IV bags contaminated with other patients’ fluids while she administered saline solution to patients who were in the hospital for cardiac chemical stress tests.

Lan had been administering these stress tests to patients since 2004. She may have infected as many as 1,851 patients with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases if fluids from one patient seeped back into the bag and were then transferred to other patients.

The hospital has apparently sent out 1,851 letters to patients who may have affected. The nurse’s flagrant behavior will likely result in numerous Florida medical malpractice lawsuits being filed against the hospital. In fact, NBC 6 Miami has reported that at least one has already been filed. Lan was suspended from her job after the story broke and then later resigned. She has since left the country.

Hospital errors and medical malpractice

It is estimated that medical malpractice kills over 100,000 patients every year. While most of us tend to only equate medical malpractice with doctors, the truth is that medical malpractice can also be committed by physicians assistants, nurses, lab technicians or just about anyone whose job requires a license.

If you’ve been injured due to medical negligence, it’s important to understand that every state has its own statute of limitations for filing medical malpractice lawsuits. While Florida’s medical malpractice statute of limitations is 2 years, it can be much shorter in other states – such as one year in Tennessee, Kentucky and others. In certain situations involving government hospitals, the time period can be even shorter than that. An experienced medical malpractice lawyer will be able to evaluate your situation, analyze your options and explain the process.

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Jeffrey Johnson

Insurance Lawyer

Jeffrey Johnson is a legal writer with a focus on personal injury. He has worked on personal injury and sovereign immunity litigation in addition to experience in family, estate, and criminal law. He earned a J.D. from the University of Baltimore and has worked in legal offices and non-profits in Maryland, Texas, and North Carolina. He has also earned an MFA in screenwriting from Chapman Univer...

Insurance Lawyer

Mary Martin

Published Legal Expert

Mary Martin has been a legal writer and editor for over 20 years, responsible for ensuring that content is straightforward, correct, and helpful for the consumer. In addition, she worked on writing monthly newsletter columns for media, lawyers, and consumers. Ms. Martin also has experience with internal staff and HR operations. Mary was employed for almost 30 years by the nationwide legal publi...

Published Legal Expert

Editorial Guidelines: We are a free online resource for anyone interested in learning more about legal topics and insurance. Our goal is to be an objective, third-party resource for everything legal and insurance related. We update our site regularly, and all content is reviewed by experts.

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