Kaiser Permanente was forced to pay an $18,000 fine resulting from an injury to one of its nurses when she was pinned between a medical bed and an MRI machine at a facility in Redwood City, California, according to a story in the Daily Post.
The incident occurred in February this year but an investigation by California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) finally wrapped up this month.
According to the investigation, the nurse had injuries to her pelvis, right leg, and abdomen, one of which was bad enough to require surgery. The nurse had been prepping a patient with another nurse in an adjacent room to the MRI machine when she was suddenly flung across the room by the intense magnetic forces which attracted the bed to the machine.
The investigators found fault with unfollowed procedures at the hospital that should have required MRI personnel to supervise what was going on in the room. A door to the room which should have been closed was left open and there was no safety alarm to indicate to personnel that it was open, according to a report in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The nurse, Ainah Cervantes, told investigators that once she realized she was being pushed by the bed she started to run backwards to keep the bed from smashing her underneath it.
Hospital leaders met within hours of the incident to ensure that an incident like this didn’t happen again and began to come up with procedures to prevent it.
