Ted, stay away form second guessing ER Doctor’s decison to not allow a CRNA to take a stab at intuibating this patient. She probably would have had the same problems ER Doc and the anesthesiologist had resulting in a failed intubation.

Closing airways whether due to known or unknow etiologies is common in the Emergency Room. ER Doc himelf did EVERYTHING correctly under bad circumstances, but it was negligent for those circumstances (no equipment or the proper docs on call and immediately available)to be present in the first place.

As it turned out, this was negligence in the air and of course is not actionable. But, this incident was a “reportable event” under The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)and state health department regulations and the hospital’s peer review processes, the purpose of which is to eliminate the chain of events that casue problems leadign to medical errors. I’ll bet you 10 to 1 however, that this incident was swept under the rug, and no one performed the required “root casue analysis.” It is therefore destined to repeat itself. The hospital needs to investigate why it took “forever” to get the anesthesiologist, who was supposedly on-call to examine the patient, or why an otolaryngologist was not available, and to eliminate the bottlenecks.

Fixed, thanks — TF