Gary Bougie - Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety

This week in #patientsafety, we look at the CDC’s updated guidelines on opioids. From around the web, the CDC’s Opioid Guidelines are now available as a mobile app; a man experiences opioid-induced respiratory depression and dies after routine gallbladder surgery; and a study tries to test whether patient involvement actually improves patient safety.

From PPAHS:

Opioid Safety Starts with Informed, Mutual Decisions. Giving patients a decision-making role in their pain plan–and providing them with the information they need to arrive at informed mutual decisions–is a recurring theme in the CDC’s updated guidelines on opioids.

From Around the Web:

New CDC Opioid Guideline Mobile App Now Available. The CDC has released its free Opioid Guideline app, designed to help providers apply the recommendations of the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain into clinical practice.

Man dies after routine gallbladder surgery. Gary Bougie was two months shy of his 36th birthday when he died. His family suspects he died from opioid-induced respiratory depression after going to the hospital for gallbladder surgery.

Achieving Real-Time Respiratory Depression Surveillance of Post-Surgical Patients. A focus on challenges of alarm management in caring for patients at risk for respiratory depression–includes strategies for better monitoring, referencing PPAHS’ national survey on PCA.

Fox 9 News recently reported on the death of Gary Bougie following routine gall bladder surgery:

Gary Bougie was two months shy of his 36th birthday when he died nearly two years ago. His family suspects he died from a condition called opioid-induced respiratory depression after going to the hospital for gallbladder surgery and they want to warn other families about how to possibly avoid a tragedy like this …

Bougie had just opened his new restaurant when he went to United Hospital for surgery to remove his gallbladder back in April of 2014. He stayed overnight for observation, but his parents say learning the next morning he’d passed away from complications during the night was surreal.

While the medical examiner ruled there was no anatomical cause for Bougie’s death, his family believes the mix of pain meds he was on caused him to fall into such a deep sleep, he stopped breathing. They are suing the hospital. Their attorney says even though nurses checked on Bougie once an hour, they should have used a fingertip sensor that would have alerted them when the level of oxygen in his blood went too low. Continue reading “Was Gary Bougie’s Post-op Gallbladder Surgery Death Preventable?” →