The Today Show interviewed the authors of a newly released book, "Mistaken Identity", this week. Dateline has a two hour show about their story tonight. I remember hearing of this true life incident but was mesmerized hearing their account. I will put that book on my "To Read" list.
Two years ago there was a crash involving a van carrying a group of college kids. Five died. One who survived had traumatic brain injuries and was in a coma. For five months her family maintained a vigil by her bedside. This family sat by the bedside of a girl they thought was their daughter but had been wrongly identified. Their daughter had died in the accident. The girls were both blond, blue-eyed and bore a striking resemblance to each other. One family had buried a girl they thought was their daughter later to find out their daughter had been lying in a hospital for five months attended to by the family of the girl they had held a funeral for. Amazing story. More amazing, the way both families handled this tragedy. All were Christians who are not bitter and have developed a relationship and co-authored this book.
When the accident happened someone told the first family that their daughter was critically injured and might not look like herself. I worked in ED and know you must prepare families for the bruised and battered appearance of their loved ones after accidents. I am not sure how they decided who this girl was. We carry our identity in purses which arn't in our laps after a mishap.
Will we ever know why she was misidentified? Perhaps not. But they must have been confident after the first family arrived and identified her as their daughter.
I have a very personal experience that makes me empathetic with the hospital staff. One Sunday morning several years ago I was working in ED. Staffing was me and an LPN. (They changed our staffing patterns shortly after this incident.) He was a very competant guy, trained as a pre-hospital EMT. The morning had been quiet and then all hell broke loose. An ambulance brought in a woman with chest pain who promptly arrested. We called the Code team. Someone called her family to tell them to come to the hospital quickly while we were working to save her. We were not successful and the patient died. No sooner had she been pronounced dead when we got another critical patient as a walk in. He fibrillated and we shocked him. About this time the desk notified us that "Mrs. A....'s family had arrived." I had the another RN from ICU who had come for the code take over with the new patient. I went to the lobby and asked for "Mrs. A...'s family." I escorted them to our quiet room and told them what had happened. I had the supervisor call the chaplain to be with them and offered them the phone to call the rest of their family. The plan was to wait for the rest of the family and then view the body of the deceased. Then the man said something that made my heart sink. He said he had just picked up a message about his mom being at the hospital that had been left last evening. I realized that the dead woman was not his mom. They had the same last name. After checking with the supervisor, I discovered his mom was in critical condition upstairs in our ICU. Both were critical on arrival. I was giving him better news, but I wanted to fall through a hole in the ground. Stress. Stress may have made me not as careful as I should have been. They had been identified to me as our dead lady's family. Without the second arrest happening on the heels of the first one I believe I would have been more careful. This was not my favorite day working as a nurse. I haven't been able to talk about this for the last five years. I guess it is time to forgive myself. You can see how I can be forgiving of that hospital who misidentified the girl.
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