This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A man died at a Sydney hospital after he was given another patient’s medication following routine day surgery, a New South Wales coroner has heard.

An inquest is being held at Glebe coroner’s court into the death of father-of-two Paul Lau, who was 54 when he died following a knee reconstruction at Sydney’s Macquarie University hospital in June 2015.

Counsel assisting Kirsten Edwards on Monday said she expected the coroner would hear evidence that Lau died from a drug overdose after he was mistakenly given the medication of another, more complex, surgical patient.

Edwards suggested there were more than 15 missed opportunities to detect the fatal error and save Lau’s life in the 10 or so hours leading to his death before 1am on 19 June.

“It probably strikes fear in the heart of anyone who might be going for routine day surgery,” she said.

Lau’s anaesthetist, Dr Orison Kim, told the court he was using the hospital’s new electronic prescribing system on the day of Lau’s surgery.

The knee reconstruction was uneventful but during the following surgery of a more complex patient, Kim said he believed he was probably reminded by a nurse that he had not prescribed intravenous fluids to Lau.

Kim believed it likely that he went back in to Lau’s record to update his prescription before his attention was brought back to the current surgery.

When the anaesthetist returned to his workstation a few minutes later he did not realise he had left Lau’s record open, and he unknowingly entered prescriptions for the current surgical patient into that record, he said.

Edwards, during her opening address on Monday, said the medication was in much greater doses than Lau could tolerate.

The inquest continues.

