A student nurse who accidentally injected coffee into the veins of an 80-year-old female patient who died hours later has defended herself on broadcast television by saying that "anyone can get confused."

Rejane Moreira Telles said that she had just three days of work experience in a Rio de Janeiro clinic when she botched up administering a drip to Palmerina Pires Ribeiro, who died hours after she had coffee mixed with milk injected straight into her body.

The 23-year-old appeared on Brazilian TV Globo's Fantastico where she told reporters that she was aware of the risk of administering an intravenous feed. However, the novice nurse added that "anyone can get confused."

"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 told the TV station.

Telles, who has been indicted for involuntary manslaughter alongside two nurses and another student, claimed that she was not trained to perform that kind of procedure.

Riberio died last week at a clinic in São João de Meriti, located in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. According to the reporters from the popular television program, doctors said that the milky coffee would have gone directly to the elderly woman's heart and lungs.

"It would have been as if the patient was suffocating," Dr. Armando Carreir,a nutritional specialist at the Federal University of Fluminens' Hospital Antonio Pedro, told reporters at TV Globo's Fantastico.

The victim's daughter, Loreni Ribeiro told the station that she witnessed the trainee nurse give her mother the coffee injection.

"I saw my mother was agitated, she opened her mouth, and this youngster put coffee with milk into the veins of my mother. Half a glass," Ribeiro said.