The Nurses Are Innocent: The Digoxin Poisoning Fallacy

I didn't really care for this text. There was a lot of duplication which I found to be monotonous after awhile.

Yesterday I received a book that I ordered over Christmas. It is called "The Nurses are Innocent - The Digoxin Poisoning Fallacy" by Gavin Hamilton MD. Before bedtime, I had read the whole thing. There are two major themes in the book. The writer is a radiologist who specialised in IVP tests. About 1 in 1000 patients would have a really bad reaction to one of the drugs given to show up the kidneys on x-ray. A very small number of those reactions would result in death from anaphylactic shock. He finally stumbles on the fact that the drug is administered with a syringe with a rubber plunger, and a substance in the rubber is causing the reaction, not the drug itself.The second theme is about the nurses who were blamed for digoxin poisoning at Sick Kids. I think he makes a good case that the babies dying at Sick Kids in the early 1980's were being poisoned by the same compound, but by build up in the body rather than anaphylactic shock. He really tears apart the bad testing that was done in trying to implicate Susan Nelles. (The Grange Royal Commission of Inquiry is available on the Internet, and it is also required reading for those who do not remember these tragedies.)After the problem was improved by avoiding natural rubber in the syringes, there was another outbreak which he put down to natural rubber stoppers in drug vials.Throughout all this, the people at Health Canada were more concerned with not upsetting the manufacturers than in fixing the problem. Unfortunately, nurses are at the forefront of those who administer drugs, and they can get blamed for things that were caused by bureaucratic incompetence and inertia.My daughter is a nurse, married to a policeman. I have ordered a copy for them.

The Nurses Are Innocent is something of a whistleblower book even now in that some Pharmaceutical companies are still using a rubber compound, that could be dangerous in the manufacture of some syringes.I found that one of the scientists in the book was given PhD status when he did not have it, but otherwise I felt the book had been well researched. I feel it has an important message for governing health bodies.

I must ready for every nurse and novice. The story of Susan Nelles reminds us how very vulnerable we are in the medical field.

Clear and interesting medical investigation which proove that Susan Nelles (a nurse wrongly accused of mudering babies in Toronto in the 80')was indeed innoncent. The identification of the real killer is a total surprise. Great job done by Gavin Hamilton.