Nurses who mixed up bodies of two infants sacked

Two nurses who handed over wrong bodies of two infants to their families have been sacked.
Dr Yasser Issa Al Nuaimi, who heads the medical zone, said the nurses of Saqr Hospital were removed following a ministerial order.

Towards the end of last year, a UAE national, Yousif Shaheen, lost his one-month-old son Younis who died of breathing trouble at the hospital. He was given a body and he buried the boy in the Ras Al Khaimah Muslim cemetery.

No sooner had he buried the boy than he got a call from the hospital saying he had buried the wrong baby. His child was still lying in the morgue. He in fact had buried the son of an Indian from Sharjah.

Dr Al Nuaimi said the nurses had been suspended pending an investigation by a committee which submitted its report. The decision to remove them was taken by Hamad Abdul Rahman Al Madfa, Minister of Health, and the ministry's undersecretary.

They said the Indian nurses had made a grave mistake and had to be punished.

Investigations conducted by the Health Ministry's team revealed that there is nothing wrong with the hospital's system, but the bodies were switched because of the nurses' mistakes.

Investigations showed that the bodies were handed over in the morning. Saqr Hospital does not keep bodies, which are taken to the main morgue in Saif bin Ghobash Hospital.

The ICU for newborns had one section which was recently split into two units. Each of the bodies was kept in a different unit.

He said the nurses believed there was only one child in the ICU. When the national family came, one of the nurses handed over a body. When the Indian family came, one of the nurses handed over the other body.

The mistake was discovered when it was too late. Dr Al Nuaimi has urged staff to be more careful in future.