- Kaiser Permanente nurse Ainah Cervantes required surgery for lacerations caused by screws embedded in her body
- The healthcare provider has now been fined $18,000 due to the workplace accident
- An investigation into the incident at the Redwood City facility found it ‘failed to provide radiology services in a safe manner’
A California nurse required surgery for “crushing injuries” after a freak accident left her trapped between an MRI machine and a bed.
Ainah Cervantes was left trapped after the device’s intense magnetic force pulled a hospital bed towards her.
The nurse was with a patient at the Kaiser Permanente facility in Redwood City when the terrifying incident occurred in February.
The patient was unharmed, but Cervantes suffered deep lacerations that required surgery after two screws were embedded in her body.
“I was pushed through the bed,” Cervantes told California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) investigators KTVU reports.
California nurse Ainah Cervantes found herself pinned between an MRI machine and a hospital bed after a freak accident
The Kaiser Permanente nurse required surgery for lacerations she suffered when screws impaled her body
“I actually ran backwards. If I didn’t run, the bed would crush me under it,” she said.
An investigation was conducted only months after the accident and concluded that the medical facility “failed to provide radiological services in a safe manner.”
The healthcare provider now faces an $18,000 fine for workplace injuries.
The report found that there were several protocol violations surrounding the use of the machine, a diagnostic tool used to scan the body using magnetic fields and radio waves.
There were no MRI personnel in the room at the time of the incident and investigators say the security alarm did not sound.
They also said the room door was left open and the patient was not screened.
Employees had not received adequate safety training and the hospital failed to manually test the door alarm, which violates Kaiser Permanent MRI safety rules, the report found.
The healthcare provider has now been fined $18,000 due to the workplace accident
The incident occurred in February at the Redwood City plant in California
“The many safety failures … created a culture of unsafe practices,” researchers said.
A typical MRI machine is about 300 times stronger than a refrigerator magnet.
Online videos show how to suck metal objects with ease. One fragment shows a stapler ‘falling apart’ due to its enormous force.
The devices work by emitting a strong magnetic field that forces protons in the body to align with that field, according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
When radio waves pulse through the patient, the protons are stimulated and strain against the pull of the magnetic field to produce the image.
Sheila Gilson, senior vice president of Kaiser Permanente San Mateo, told KTVU that teams responded quickly and those involved “immediately received the care and support they needed.”
“This was a rare event, but we won’t be satisfied until we understand why an accident happens and make changes to prevent it from happening again,” Gilson added.
But the outlet reports that the incident was not the first of this kind. There are photos of an incident in 2015 in which no one was injured a medical equipment cart taped to an MRI scanner.
Their statement continued: “As an organization committed to continuous learning improvement, Kaiser Permanente fully investigated the incident and used what we learned to make specific operational changes to increase safety.”