I have been working as a nurse for 17 years and there are many occasions when people have shown me their admiration for having the courage or ability to do my job. In the first years I worked in an ambulance, and there I saw everything. It was very hard, but it helped me to think that these people needed me and that I should do everything I could to improve their situation.
Then I started working in pediatrics, where I am now, and they often ask me how I can give them vaccines, draw blood, cure them, and often see them and make them suffer. "It is pure vocation ... I try not to think about it much, and I am aware that in spite of everything it is for their own good," I tell them.
Vocation. Something very necessary in certain professions such as nursing. Because if you lack it you run the risk of wanting to be somewhere else, of ending up hating your job or doing terrible things like the one that made being a nurse we are talking about today, one that endangered at least one baby by administering morphine so he wouldn't cry.
A premature baby that suddenly got worse
His name is Federica Vecchini, is 43 years old and has been arrested, as we read on ABC, for give morphine to a baby To sleep during your turn.
Apparently he did not calculate the dose well, and the boy suffered a severe respiratory crisis that forced her to expose her terrible action.
The baby was born premature and was evolving very well, admitted to the neonatology unit of the Borgo Roma hospital in Verona. It was their last night, as they had scheduled the discharge for the next day, when suddenly it began to get worse in a worrying way.
The doctors came quickly, wondering what could be happening to him, watching as his breathing slowed down more and more, and his heart began to be affected. He was transferred to intensive care to start resuscitation maneuvers when they were surprised by the indication of a nurse, Federica, who told them that they had to give him Naloxone.
Naloxone is the opioid receptor antagonist, or what is the same, it is the antidote for drugs such as morphine, heroin, etc.
There was a silence in which no one said anything, but at the same time everything was said. The doctor on duty did not hesitate to listen: "Do what she says."
The next day, the same doctor presented a report to the hospital's pediatrics officer to study the case and clear responsibilities. The boy's life had been in serious danger because of the nurse.
In jail since Thursday
Now Vecchini, a nurse with almost 20 years of experience in the hospital is in jail, where he says he is innocent and had saved the child's life. However, the medication he recommended would have done absolutely nothing for the baby if someone had not previously given him an opioid drug. Now the research will go further in the search for other babies who may have been sedated in their turns so they wouldn't cry.
