Babies swapped in Australian hospital

Baby confusion in Australian clinic

07/18/2011

After the baby confusion in an Australian clinic, the people responsible for explanations are endeavored. Actually, many safety measures are designed to prevent accidental confusion of infants in hospitals, but human error has caused two mothers to breastfed a stranger for more than eight hours, a spokesperson for the clinic in Geelong Town, west of Melbourne, said.

In the Australian hospital, the babies were exchanged by two mothers and the women were then breastfed for hours by strangers. The two Australian mothers have experienced what thousands of women fear at birth in a larger hospital: their children were accidentally exchanged by the clinic staff at a careless moment. And had not a particularly attentive member noticed the confusion, the women might still breastfeed a stranger today.

Human error Cause of baby confusion
Actually, in the birth stations of the clinics, various security measures, such as bracelets for mother and child for identification, to avoid accidental confusion of infants. However, in the current case, the clinicians did not seem to have matched the bracelets of the two infants with those of their mothers thoroughly enough, so the women breastfed an unfamiliar baby for more than eight hours. Only through the intervention of an attentive family member was the baby confused at the end. Although the clinic management apologized immediately for the „human error“, but the mothers were taken for the most important first many hours with their own child. The first contact with the own child immediately after the birth is according to the experts a particularly sensitive moment, in which the binding between mother and child reaches a new level. But the mothers in the Australian clinic spent this moment not with their own, but with a strange child. Maybe even the confusion would have attracted no attention and the mothers would have taken the strange babies home unless a particularly attentive family member had noticed the different inscriptions on the mother and child's bracelets.

Clinic management announces intensive investigations
The clinic management and the staff have expressly apologized for the baby confusion that had already been noticed on Friday and asked mothers for their understanding of human error. The infants were also subjected to an intensive examination to exclude possible infections by nursing the foreign women. Since in the end the right babies have landed with their mothers, the physicians may hope for the indulgence of those affected. However, further investigation into the incident was initiated to definitively avoid such errors in the future, the clinic administration said. In the face of the current case, however, the question arises, how often such confusions occur in the clinic's everyday life and how many of these confusions may not be detected, so that those affected a lifetime „foreign“ Raising a child. (Fp)

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Picture credits: Lydia Margerdt