That's absolutely horrible. Medical care is one of the worst-quality service industries around. People are constantly making mistakes. I've had two grandparents either almost die or had their hospital visits prolonged significantly because of stupidass nurses, aids, and doctors.

And people want socialized medicine here in the U.S.?! Hell no!

That sort of thing probably happens across all types of health care systems, including private ones here in the US. People are going to make mistakes regardless of a profit motive.

Draug I live in the US and so did both my grandparents. haha It sucks either way, no matter the system.

@jman as being a nurse of well over 25 years I'm sorry to say your correct in saying there are to many of the above type. I've seen to many errors that could have or did cause harm. How ever many times it's the system at fault as often the individual.

@Draugnar The privite system is at least as guilty of those kind of errors.

Draugnar: What the hell are you ranting about?

@ kestas - Not to get off topic but do what countries say tetraplegic instead of quadraplegic?

Good question.

The question that we really need to ask is, why is it possible for a nurse to just turn off the ventilator like that? Its a very bad bit of design.

Mistakes like this, sadly, cannot be avoided by insisting on "more careful nurses or what have you. People will make stupid mistakes, the question is how to stop it from being possible to make serious ones.

That he had already lodged a complaint is most worrying- that it wasn't attended to shows a systematic failure.

@Draugnar: "socialized medicine" if you want to call it that (the NHS, anyway) saved my sister's life, and bear in mind it was a subcontracted service which made the mistake.

@Durden; not sure, just copied the headline. Doesn't "tetra" mean 5 and "quadra" mean 4? Hmm, no idea

@TGM: I can see that argument too, but I imagine this is a piece of hardware designed for people who are well trained. When people try to make these things idiot proof people become overly reliant on the idiot-proofing, and that leads to equivalent problems. Ultimately you just need to be trained to use a piece of equipment which someone's life depends on.
I definitely agree that this happening after having lodged a complaint about indicates a very big problem

quad/tetra means four, quint means five.

Ah okay, I guess one is latin and one isn't, though they both sound like latin

not that it's important, but quad (latin) and tetra (greek) - five is quint (latin) and pent (greek) - just looked this up, never noticed before...

Weird, I think in general we use quad for 4 (eg "quadrangle") and pent for 5 (eg "pentagon"), interesting (more or less ;-p)

I'm glad everyone agrees Draugnar's comment was invalid.

We use Greek numbers in words with Greek roots, and Latin words in words with Latin roots. "-gon" and "-hedron" are drawn from Greek, so pentagon, hexagon, etc (and also tetrahedron, a 4-sided solid). "-angle" is drawn from Greek, so "triangle, quadrangle." The word "tetragon" does appear rarely, and "trigon" was an ancient ball game played in a triangle.

So the question is "-plegic", greek or latin. Survey says greek...

yet by another measure (google search results):
quadraplegic-494,000 to tetraplegic-68,000
Quadra wins by some distance.

I think Ghost brings up an excellent point. Why isn't there a key or something that needs to be inserted to turn this device off. More of a design error than anything else. Or, a terrible siren that goes off when the device isn't working.

problem: nurse is too inept to know that she turns off critical life support

your solution: update the technology so even inept nurses can use it

another solution: use trained nurses.

This is pretty umistakably a human error, she turned it off for gods sake. why does this call for an overhaul of the technology? theres nothing wrong with the ventilator, it just needs to be "ON: to work.

Oh, I would have thought the solution would have been "de-evolve society so we don't have ventilators and this guy died when he had his accident. Hunter-Gathers rule!"

I find it hard to believe that any medical machine, however complex, does not have a clearly labeled on/off switch and in any case wouldn't there have been some audible signal that the machine had turned off? Perhaps these machines need some kind of safety switch and/or better labeling but clearly this woman had no idea what she was doing and the fault lies with the company that sent her in place of a trained professional.

de-evolve society?

I dont think a civilization that has extreme suicidal tendencies is any sort of evolution.
"but what do you mean? look how FAR we've come! we can watch reality TV and have a coca cola on any continent!"

@Sic

I love it! This is a perfect example of how we have completely opposite solutions to the same problem.

Yes, in a perfect world, we'd just have competent nurses; unfortunately, that clearly isn't the case. So, why not add a very simple feature to a very complicated (and life-critical) device to help prevent any problems?

For someone who is an anarchist, I find your disdain for how other people choose to spend their time / money to be... odd. If someone makes a choice to watch Survivor or some of the other assorted lameless on the TV, why do you care?

technology is now a solution for total incompetance?

If someone needs a big red flashing sign that tells them not to kill someone perhaps they need a different career. I understand the need for safeguards... but come the fuck on for real.

@Sic

Yeah, they do need a new career, but this guy is still brain damaged. It isn't about the dip-shit that turned off the machine, it's about the person whose shit-ass life she just made even worse. We don't design machines to work in a perfect world; we design them to work in *this* world. And in this world (apparently) they let anyone operate a ventilator.

There are laws on the books for criminal negligence in the US. Does the UK have them as well? I wonder if these could be applied to the nurse. Nothing can be done for the poor guy's brain, but society should be able to get him a measure of justice.

I care because television brainwashes you. Havnt you ever read fahrenheit 451?

Idk. I just heard y'all saying the machine should be easier to operate and I envisioned the hospital in the movie idiocracy.