A student nurse who mistakenly injected coffee into the veins of an 80-year-old patient who died hours later has defended herself by saying “anyone can get confused.”

Rejane Moreira Telles, 23, said she had just three days of work experience in the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, clinic when she mixed up administering a drip to Palmerina Pires Ribeiro.

She appeared on TV Globo’s Fantastico show where she said she was aware of the risk of administering an intravenous feed.

But she added: “As they [the feed and blood drips] were next to each other, anyone can get confused. I injected the coffee and I put it in the wrong place.”

Telles, who has been indicted for involuntary manslaughter alongside two nurses and another student, also revealed they had not been trained for that kind of procedure.

Riberio died last week at a clinic in São João de Meriti, in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro.

Doctors contacted by TV Globo’s Fantastico said that the milky coffee would have gone directly to the patient’s heart and lungs.

Dr. Armando Carreir, a nutritional specialist at the Federal University of Fluminens’ Hospital Antonio Pedro, said ‘It would have been as if the patient was suffocating.’

The victim’s daughter, Loreni Ribeiro, said “I saw my mother was agitated. She opened her mouth, and this youngster put coffee with milk into (her) veins.”