Medical blunder leaves mother blind

The middle-aged mother of three expected to be discharged five days after her operation but instead a medical mistake made while she recovered from successful surgery caused her to go blind.

Documents show she was given an anti-coagulant drug that caused a brain haemorrhage and damaged her sight because of the pressure inside her head.

She has received a confidential payout from the hospital but Australia's medical watchdog is yet to tell her who, if anyone, will be punished for the mistake.

There have been 3099 medication errors at Canberra Hospital since January 1, 2010 - according to figures provided to the Sunday Canberra Times - and these are only the incidents voluntarily recorded under the hospital's Riskman reporting system. A hole in the voluntary reporting system was exposed by the fact that no case of blindness caused by medication error was recorded in the past three years, even after the hospital faced a lengthy legal action from the Rings that ended with a financial settlement.

Despite this, an ACT Health spokeswoman said the hospital had a strong focus on the recording of errors. The spokeswoman said the overwhelming majority of the 3099 medication mistakes were near misses - where the wrong medication was almost given - or minor incidents.

Mrs Ring originally went to hospital to have cancerous bone removed from her head.

After waking up from the surgery she remembers feeling fine and asking to be discharged but, because of the complexity of her procedure, she needed to spend the following days in the intensive care unit.

Within 24 hours of her operation she was given the anti-coagulant medication Heparin to stop blood clots. This was given after she had already been administered a similar drug, Clexane, and apparently done without a test to confirm the Heparin could be safely given.

''It thinned her blood into water,'' husband Steven said.

After her brain haemorrhage, Mrs Ring was paralysed down one side of her body, an effect that gradually disappeared, and she woke up blind, a condition that she discovered would be permanent.

''The thing that troubles me is the error which caused these catastrophic effects was caused by the failure to conduct a 10-minute test,'' Mrs Ring said.

This test, the family says, is an APTT or blood test that gauges how well the blood is clotting.

Mrs Ring, a former full-time IT contractor who used to ride a bicycle to her office, no longer works. She uses a white stick to navigate.

The family's legal case was settled a year ago before it went to trial.

Steven Ring said it was in the interest of the public to know his wife's story.

''It is important for the public to know that mistakes and errors are a part of the medical system and that the consequences can be devastating,'' Mr Ring said.

''It is our hope that Susan's story will help the authorities at the Canberra Hospital improve the quality of their procedures and protocols to ensure that what happened to Susan does not happen to anyone else.''