A “substantial overdose” of medication by staff contributed to the death of an 88-year-old patient at North Shore Private Hospital in Sydney, an inquest has found. “Quite simply, the nurses gave the wrong dose,” the Deputy State Coroner Magistrate Harriet Grahame concluded. Audrey MacGregor was being treated for pneumonia in October 2013 when she was mistakenly given ten times the prescribed dose of the opioid painkiller hydromorphone.
