Usually in this space we share stories from patients who have survived an unsafe injection. Today we are sharing the survival story of a physician who stopped colleagues from performing unsafe injections during her residency.

Here is Susan’s story

My story of improper injections is from my residency. I was in my third year of family practice residency in Minnesota and I was starting a procedures rotation. The attending physician and nurses were preparing for procedures that day – mainly mole removals and simple skin techniques. I noticed that after the first procedure the nurses took the needle off of the syringe and put a new needle on it in order to use the same syringe of anesthetic for the second patient.

I told them, “You can’t do that.”
They explained that because the attending physician was not drawing back it was actually safe to use the same syringe with a different needle.

I told them that it was NOT the case and then we put the needle and syringe into the sharps container. After class that day I spoke with the program director and several others at the residency. By the next week when I was back on that rotation the procedure had changed. I noticed that there was some conversation between the attending physician and the nurses about how that change had come about.

I was just shocked and appalled at the time. Residency is very stressful. In addition to the stress of learning so many things, I didn’t think I would have to be stressed about watching healthcare providers to make sure they were using proper injection technique. Its just very important to always keep your eyes open because this could happen anywhere.