🎙️ Listening to The Retrievals.

This is a podcast from the famous about a horrific incident in the history of the Yale Fertility Centre.

Women would visit the centre in order to participate in IVF treatment. Part of the process is the egg retrieval, where eggs are retrieved from the ovaries. This is an invasive procedure involving a needle being inserted into the ovary.

In isolation it’s potentially extremely painful, so patients are sedated or given anaesthesia such that they don’t suffer. Except at Yale, some were not. Instead of the intended fentanyl they were given vials of saline - salt water - which has no pain-prevention characteristics. Some thus went through an absolutely agonising, totally unnecessary, experience.

At this point it’s no spoiler to say that the fundamental cause was that a nurse was stealing the fentanyl for herself and secretly replacing it with the saline. But of course there’s a lot more to dive into in this story - the who, why and how did she get away with it for so long in such a renowned institution - alongside the important stories of the patients themselves.