Nurse Screwed Up Inserting A Catheter In My 3 Year Old Toddler. He Had To Undergo Emergency Surgery.

Location: Texas, USA

My 3-year-old son needed a MAG3 and VCUG test done for a UTI. The nurse inserted the catheter after giving him an oral sedative and applying a numbing ointment around his penile area. My son cried during and after the catheter insertion (we were told it wouldn't hurt), and we were told it was just irritation. Then they continued with the MAG3 test for an hour, during which my son cried and struggled a lot. To keep him calm, they sedated him more through an IV.

At the end of the MAG3 test, he was supposed to pee, but the pee bottle was empty. That is when they realized something was wrong; his gown was drenched in blood. They tried to push the catheter in to see if his bladder would empty, but that made him cry more.

Then, the on-call urologist was called. He tried removing the catheter and reinserting it (my son was under general anesthesia by now). He realized that the catheter was not reaching the bladder and said he needed to use a scope to insert the catheter properly. With the scope, he found that there were five false passages made in my son's urethra during the initial insertion, and he couldn't find a path through to the bladder. So, he made a path through the stomach and inserted another catheter to drain the bladder. He said he would have to perform another surgery next week to put a catheter through the urethra and leave it there for a few weeks for the urethra to heal. The doctor mentioned that a mistake was made during the catheter insertion. The nurse did not check to see if the catheter was in the bladder before inflating the balloon at the end (did not check for pee), which may have caused the trauma.

It has been a very traumatic experience for my son and us, and we are still trying to process what happened. Is there anything we can do to ensure this does not cause any long-term physical problems for my son?