Coroner’s Report: Masks Contributed to Death of Hospital Patient in Overdose Mix Up

Face coverings contributed to a patient’s death in 2020 after they “aggravated” communication problems between doctors resulting in the administration of a fatal overdose, a coroner’s report has ruled.

The use of face coverings in one of Britain’s socialised National Health Service’s hospitals contributed to the death of a patient after a junior doctor administered 50 kg/mg instead of a 15 mg/kg dose measurement of phenytoin — an anti-epileptic drug — after he misheard a senior doctor’s orders which, it was determined, were muffled by a mask.

The victim John Skinner was admitted to the hospital in May 2020 after suffering from seizures, but later died of acute heart failure and phenytoin toxicity within 15 minutes of being given the fatal dose of the medication at Watford General hospital, The Telegraph reports.

The unnamed junior doctor gave Skinner 3,500 mg of phenytoin which considerably exceeded the NHS’ recommended daily dose of 200mg and 500mg a day, to be taken as 1 or 2 doses.

Graham Danbury, who has been the assistant coroner for Hertfordshire since 1987, found that the doctor’s face coverings had contributed to a “failure in verbal communication” that had resulted in the overdose, and in a ‘prevention of future deaths’ report, wrote that this “foreseeable” tragedy had the potential happen again unless the NHS updated its procedures.- READ MORE