Article posted on:09/18/2008

An Arizona jury recently awared the family of an 81 year old $6 million dollars following her death from morphine toxicity. The victim, a dialysis patient, was originally treated for sciatica at a hospital and was receiving 30 milligrams of morphine a day. When she was transferred to a nursing home, her dosage was doubled to 60 milligrams a day. Unfortunately, at the time of transfer a nurse negligently wrote an order for the victim to receive 90 milligrams a day. A day after her first dosage of 90 milligrams, she began suffering from confusion, twitching and became delirious. She died the following day. The victim's family sued the nursing home and hospital on the grounds that they should have realized that 90 milligrams was an excessive amount of morphine for a dialysis patient, that the hospital was inadequately staffed and that the nursing home's workers should have realized the signs and symptoms of morphine toxicity and treated her the day before she died.

At STSW, our lawyers have successfully handled several cases similar to the above matter against nursing homes in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. area. If a loved one has suffered death or catastrophic injury as a result of a morphine overdose / medication overdose / or other medical error, contact the lawyers at STSW for a free consultation at 410-385-9104. These medication overdoses are easily preventable and should not go unchallenged.