An investigative report into a recent mishap in which a nurse became trapped between a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and her patient’s bed revealed safety concerns about the California hospital where the incident occurred.
The magnetic force of the MRI equipment abruptly dragged a hospital bed to it, causing injuries that necessitated surgery for the nurse, Ainah Cervantes.
Cervantes was caring for a patient on a bed when the accident occurred at a Kaiser Permanente medical clinic in Redwood City, California.
You can see the magnet’s incredible pulling strength on any metal object in online footage of the equipment. Proponents of MRI safety state that burns, implanted devices, and projectiles are the most prevalent causes of injuries and fatalities in the diagnostic procedure.
Documents reveal Cervantes underwent surgery to remove two embedded screws after a severe laceration. Her patient slipped off the bed to the floor, unharmed.
The event happened in February, but an inquiry took months. The California Department of Public Health concluded the Redwood City facility failed to provide radiologic examinations in a safe manner.
Police reported that no MRI staff were in the room. Neither the patient nor anybody else was screened, and the room door was left open. The safety alarm never went off.
The inquiry said the event violated multiple Kaiser MRI safety regulations. It found that certain personnel did not get safety training and that the hospital did not test the door’s alarm yearly.
Kaiser Permanente faces $18,000 California and OSHA penalties for alleged mistakes and workplace injuries.
Local media sources claimed the Redwood City hospital had other incidents.
The television station received a snapshot of a metal medical cart stuck to an MRI scanner. Kaiser Permanente believed the snapshot was from a March 2015 event that did not injure anybody.
Tobias Gilk, an MRI specialist, claimed the devices remain magnetically attracted after attaching. It continues pulling, dragging to bring the magnetically attracted item closer to the MRI scanner.
Gilk’s MRI machine incident study contains government statistics showing that as scans and tests grow, so do accidents. He believes thousands of events go unreported annually.
