The Director of Nursing came to me and said there was a possibility that we may have given the wrong infant to the wrong set of parents. Although they were not certain a mistake had been made, the nurses in the newborn nursing unit thought it could be possible that two sets of parents had the wrong baby, and they needed to know what to do. We met with the hospital lawyers just to make them aware of potential litigation if this were true, and to let the university executives know that we potentially had a major problem. We asked both sets of parents to meet with us separately to discuss our concerns that they might have the wrong child.

At this time, all newborn babies at this medical center had their footprints recorded on their birth certificates. So we had new footprints made for each baby, and brought in a fingerprint expert from the FBI to see whether they matched up to the prints on the birth certificates. The final decision of the FBI expert indicated that we had given the infants to the wrong set of parents in both cases. He felt 99% sure that this was an accurate analysis. We advised both sets of parents that they had the wrong baby, and that we needed to make an exchange. It was very difficult to ask them to do this, because by this time, the babies had been with the parents for 6 to 8 weeks, and the parents had developed emotional attachments to the babies. We had the FBI talk with each of the parents to assure them of the accuracy of their techniques, their analysis, and their conclusion. The parents did agree to exchange the babies. We felt sure this situation would lead to litigation. However, fortunately for the medical center, no legal action was taken.

 

1. Describe how you would investigate this type of situation.

2. Should the Director of the Nursery and the Director of Nursing be held responsible for this mishap if it was found that the staff nurse had violated nursery policy?

3. Was it appropriate to bring in outside expertise to determine if the situation actually occurred? Was there any other alternative?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 In such a situation a thorough investigation would involve verifying the concerns raised by the nu... View the full answer