Placing a catheter for IV medication delivery may seem like a no-brainer, but doing it incorrectly cost one woman her dream career and a Pennsylvania hospital more than $900,000 in damages.

Neurobiologist Myriam Gastard, a French national living in suburban Philadelphia, claims she won't be able to pursue her dream of finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease because an improper catheter placement in 2008 left her with numbness, loss of movement and weakness in her right hand, according to a local news report.

When Ms. Gastard went to the emergency room of Paoli Hospital in January 2008 complaining of right-side pain, a series of tests were ordered and a nurse inserted a catheter in her right arm for medication administration. Immediately after insertion, Ms. Gastard complained of sharp pain and requested the catheter's removal. Instead, the catheter was left in for more than 24 hours, according to court documents.

Ms. Gastard felt loss of feeling in her right hand after being sent home and later had surgery to repair nerve damage, but she continues to feel numbness and loss of strength in certain fingers and her right hand, reports the Daily Local. She sued Paoli Hospital for negligence in November 2009, claiming loss of future earnings because the injury precluded her from performing microsurgery in lab rats, a necessity for the type of Alzheimer's research she'd planned to do.

The hospital and nurse admitted negligence but argued that they weren't liable for loss of income because Ms. Gastard continued to work for Leica Microsystems as a product specialist. However, the plaintiff and her lawyers argued that her long-term career goal of researching a cure for Alzheimer's could have netted her as much as $1.8 million. A Common Pleas Court jury awarded her $927,000 in lost earnings last week.

Irene Tsikitas