ISLAMABAD, May 7: The administration of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) has dismissed two nurses for showing dereliction of duty which resulted in sending a youth into coma.

A source in the hospital told Dawn that the administration had also recommended to the Nursing Council for suspending registration of the nurses for a year.

The nurses, allegedly, without cross-checking the drug against the patient’s file, administered a wrong injection intravenously, sending the 17-year-old Javaid into coma.

An in-house inquiry revealed that a senior nurse, after receiving the medicine from the patient’s attendant, instructed a student nurse to administer it intravenously without making sure that it was the prescribed drug.

The hospital administration has also recommended the Nursing Council to hold the degree of the student nurse for a year.

Without registration with the council, the two nurses will not be able to find a job in any hospital for a year or so.

Mr Javaid, a resident of Haripur, had been suffering from haemophilia.

He was admitted to Pims on March 26, 2002. After being administered the wrong injection, he developed drug- induced unconsciousness with complete skeletal muscle paralysis, leading to cardio-pulmonary arrest.

According to the hospital record, a general medicine doctor had prescribed injection, “Transamin”, fresh frozen plasma, on the day the patient was admitted. However, the pharmacy store staff misunderstood the prescription and handed over Tracurim — a long-acting anaesthetic agent — to the patient’s attendant.

The patient’s parents, on his behalf, had filed a petition before the Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi Bench, which directed the Pims administration to bear expense of the treatment and submit a detailed report to the court after holding an inquiry.

The hospital administration has also submitted a complaint to the Margalla police station SHO to register a case against the drug store staff on charges of providing wrong medicine to the patient’s attendant.