A clinical negligence compensation payout of £100,000 has been awarded to a woman whose husband died due to a drug overdose in hospital.
Paul Richards was admitted to Birmingham's Heartlands Hospital in July 2007 in order to have chemotherapy treatment for his cancer.
He was given the fungicide Amphotericin, but junior doctor Kiran Tawana made a mistake on the dosage and nurses Vongai Gondo and Catherine Kunasta failed to double check it.
As a result, the patient was given five times the recommended amount and died within hours. The same mistake was also made on another patient, who passed away on the same day.
Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust admitted that there had been gross failures in care and has now agreed to the payout of £100,000.
It also compensated the family of the other victim and said its standards would improve.
Amphotericin is often used on cancer patients because they are particularly susceptible to fungal infections as a result of a weakened immune system. However, it must be carefully monitored, as it can cause kidney damage.
Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp, who heads KCJ's medical negligence team, comments: "These cases in some ways are the most tragic as every trust has very detailed procedures set out for drug administration, especially for strong drugs such as chemotherapy which can be extremely toxic. For three individuals to get it so wrong and for more than one patient to die of misadministration shows procedural failings as well as mistakes by individual staff."
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