Tina Imbalt Case Summary

3 year old Tina Gerhardt was admitted to the abulatroy surgery unit at Nightingale Community Hospital by her mother for bilateral myringotomies (insertion of ear tubes). After Tina was registered, she was handed off to the pre-op nurse and she explained that the surgery was going to take 45 minutes and recovery would take an hour. Tina mom gave the per-op nurse instructions to called her if Tina was done with surgery and recovery before she came back. The per-op nurse took the information down in her personal note pad but failed to pass the information on when she handed her off to Rosemary the nurse. Rosemary was unable to pass the message on to the discharge nurse because she did not receive anything or message from the pre-op nurse. Tina’s mother returned two and a half hour later and found that her child was discharge 30 minutes earlier. Security was called and code pink was also called. The local police department was notified but security. Tina was located within 30 minutes of the mother returning back to the clinic by the local law enforcement in the care of her father.
It seems as if the only thing that the hospital care about is the insurance and the demographics. The safety of the patient should be one of the top priorities. One improvement would be for the hospital to put something in the registration charts about who the patient should be released to and take the identifiation of the person registrating the child. This release should travel with the child during every step of way with a minor. when the child registers, the hospital should implement a wristband that can be scan for the parent and the child and if the parent does not have the wrist band, they cannot leave with the child unless identification is