But a spokesman for Heath and Social Services said that while the General Hospital did use a small number of the pumps in the
past, they were pulled from use in 2010.
UK Health Minister Jeremy Hunt this week launched an ‘urgent probe’ after a whistleblower alleged patients might have died as a result of the use of the pumps, which administer powerful opiate drugs.
Warnings that user error with the devices could cause deaths were first issued in the 1990s, but the NHS continued to use them until 2015.
The fear was the syringe pumps – called Graseby MS 16A and Graseby MS 26 – could be confused, leading to overdoses.
One of the devices dispensed narcotics hourly and the other over a 24-hour period.
Ten of the Graseby syringe pumps were being used in various wards at the Hospital including Corbière, the special care baby unit, Bartlett and Plémont in 2010, according to the department.
At that time 167 syringe pumps were being used in the Hospital – the remaining 157 were different models.
A Health spokesman said that Jersey had responded to an urgent safety alert in 2010 from the UK Department of Health and decommissioned the use of the Graseby syringes immediately. Alternative models have been used exclusively since then, he said.
The claims about the use of the pumps in the UK came from a whistleblower speaking to the Gosport War Memorial Hospital inquiry.
Last week an independent report found that more than 650 patients died at the Hampshire hospital between the late 1980s and 2000 after being given lethal doses of powerful painkillers.
It concluded that the opiates were used as part of an ‘institutionalised regime’ of prescribing and administering ‘dangerous’ amounts of medication that were not clinically justified.
Following the release of the report, Prime Minister Theresa May described events at Gosport as ‘deeply troubling’ and apologised to families over the time it took to get answers from the NHS.
