Wrong Anaesthetic Given at Operation

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1063, 29 August 1930, Page 1

Wrong Anaesthetic Given at Operation

DEATH OF HEADMISTRESS MISTAKE MADE BY NURSE | Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, Today. At the inquest yesterday into the death of Violet Monica Salmond, aged 37, headmistress of Craighead Diocesan School, Timaru, while a patient in St. George’s Hospital, the coroner returned a verdict that “Death was caused by alkaioidal poisoning, due to cocaine, which was injected y mistake, instead of neo-cocaine, round the tonsils of Miss Salmond before an operation for the removal of the tonsils. No blame is attachable to the operating surgeons." A NURSE gave evidence that she! did not realise that the operating surgeon, Dr. T. A. Mac Gibbon, wanted neo-cocaine, and when he asked for an anaesthetic in a syringe she put cocaine and adrenalin in it and handed the syringe to the; doctor, who started injecting. On the bottle was the label, “For local application and not for injection." Witness did not read the label properly or should have known not to use it. Dr. Mac Gibbon said: “The only explanation I can give is that the nurse was flurried and did not understand that the cocaine-adrenalin mixture was not used for injections. I took it for granted that she would know' what I wanted and did not specify neococaine."

Dr. Mac Gibbon said that when asking for an injection he had expected the nurse to give him neo-cocaine. She had given it to him at a previous operation of a similar nature. He never used cocaine for a local injection. A trained nurse would know' that a white dish was used with a syringe. Neococaine was put in a special small, sterile dish. Daisy Thwaites, matron of St. George’s Hospital, said that the nurse had been at the hospital three and a-half months. She was always regarded as an attentive and skilful nurse. She should have read the label on the bottle. She had had good oper-ating-theatre training and had been put in the theatre to relieve the regular nurse, who was on holiday. The late Miss Salmond was a cousin of Air-Marshal Sir John Salmond, who recently toured New Zealand investigating the prospects of the country for commercial aviation. She was a graduate of the London University and had extensive teaching experience in England.