Hit rock bottom!

– July 31, 2011|– By Bob LaMendola and Sally Kestin, Sun Sentinel

Orlando businesswoman Heidi Williamson came down with a sore throat in January 2010. Minor thing, no problem, the doctor said. But a prescription he wrote for her ended her life at 43.

Dr. John Taggart saw Williamson for infected and abscessed tonsils, and lanced and drained them right there in his office, according to a report filed with the state by the doctor's malpractice insurer.

For her pain, he sent her home with a prescription to take 30-milligram pills of the powerful narcotic oxycodone every four hours, the family said in a lawsuit against Taggart.

"She followed the prescription to the letter. Wrong drug, wrong dosage," said her family's attorney, Elizabeth Faiella.

In the predawn hours the next morning, her husband Mark awoke to find Williamson not breathing in bed beside him, the lawsuit said.

"Excessive dosage of oxycodone caused the patient's death," the insurer's report said. An autopsy confirmed the fatal overdose.

The lawsuit contends that the doctor should not have given her such a strong drug for basic pain relief, and that the 30-milligram pills were too large of a dose for a patient like her who had never taken the drug before and had no tolerance for it.

Mark Williamson lost the woman he lived and worked with for two decades at the appliance repair business they started.

"I'm still devastated. I can't even talk about it," Williamson said. "You live with someone for 22 years and suddenly she's gone. We built a business together and she never got to see all the fruits of our labor."

A woman suffering from aching arthritic knees went to Florida Hospital Celebration near Kissimmee in 2008 to have them replaced with artificial joints.

It's a common surgery, and at age 67, she came through it just fine. But she never went home, according to an incident report the hospital filed with the state.

To ease her pain during the hospital stay, her doctor prescribed an IV pump filled with the powerful narcotic Dilaudid, according to the report, which did not identify the woman.

She could press a button to control how much of the painkiller she received, the report said. To prevent an accidental overdose, the doctor ordered the pump be set to dispense no more than a certain amount of the drug every four hours, the report said.

But the hospital later discovered that the pump was not calibrated to dispense that dosage, and that a nurse mistakenly set it to give 50 times more Dilaudid than the correct amount, the report said.

The woman was found dead in her bed from an overdose that same day, as confirmed by an autopsy. The hospital report said it settled with the woman's family for $1 million.

• A lot of these mistakes could have and can been avoided by simply taking accurate and precise measurements. That is the reason why in science we emphasize the importance of accuracy and precision when taking measurements.

Accuracy• how close a measured value is to the actual (true) value.

Precision• how close the measured

values are to each other. – Precision will depend on the

instrument used. – Smaller increments = higher

precision.

• Reminder: this will count as a grade in your science class.

• Objective: – Create a ONE PAGER or CARTOON that illustrates the

importance of making accurate measurements in everyday life events and the possible consequences of inaccurate measurements.

– Sample scenarios:• Not enough fuel in car/airplane

• Inaccurate measurements in buildings, bridges, other constructions

• Inaccurate measurements in stunts (think TruTV most shocking, world’s dumbest, etc)

• Criteria:– Your product must include all of the following:

• Drawings, explanation of your scenario, color