As some of you may know, my mom was admitted in one of the famous hi-fi hospitals in Trivandrum. (oh! we see its ads in all local malayalam channels and newspapers!). Now, as my (one and only) maternal cousin works there, I had a chance to get a peek into the insides of "how hospital staff works", on those days.
Amma was in hospital for 3 days and 3 nights, and my cousin was in night duty, that whole week(btw, she is in reception). I sat with her till 2am, in the reception, and was able to mingle with other night duty staff like nurses, x-ray technicians, lab technician, security, and the duty doc in casualty(ER).
First I was scared of the probability of seeing accident cases in ER(I am a very weak hearted person, to say!). First day, nothing happened. Second day, the other staff became sleepy and started watching TV. My cousin cant watch as she had to connect emergency calls from ICU, CCU, labor-room, to respective docs on call. Suddenly an ambulance came with the lights flashing. And before I could understand what was going on, the first thing I heard was these nurses, Xray staff, and lab tech cursing unanimously at the patient who came, who destroyed their peaceful TV view!!!. I was dumb struck. They were cursing so loudly and running towards the ER. I was frozen. I didn't expect such filthy curse from the "Florence Nightingales" at an Emergency patient, whom I expected to be a victim of road accident.
After the first shock, I recovered. Luckily, he was not a road accident victim (sight of blood acts like chloroform for me!). A person with some chest pain (not a major heart attack). But the staff couldn't resume their favorite TV show, and was completely pissed off. And there fell my highly held expectations on nurses and other hospital staff, at ER.
But I was entirely wrong if I thot, my unexpected encounters and surprises ended there. No, I was to be witnessed more chilling stuff......
When my mom got discharged, while I was paying bill, the nurses handed my dad, her discharge sheet. (the discharge sheet held the diagnosis and the past and the present treatment given to her, with the medicines she need to take in future).We knew she had acute gastritis and hypothyroidism, for past 5 yrs. The "sweet talk nurse" asked my dad to buy all the 13 tablets wrote in the discharge sheet, which was verified and cross checked by my amma's nurse-on-duty and counter signed by the duty doctor available.(NOT her doc!).
My dad, as he was literate in English and as he cared for what was written in the discharge sheet, started reading the document. And he was not prepared for the shock of his life. Amma was diagnosed with "a severe block in coronary artery"!!!!!!!!!!!! Eeeeeeek...........now I will speak in dad's active voice:
"I was shocked. She had serious heart disease (13 tablets!!!, no wonder!). And the doctor hid it from me. He should have told me. I am her husband, at least. Why did he did this to us? If he didn't want her to know, it was ok. Oh! My God, and I was always told she had acute gastritis. Why did they hide this?
Wait...wait....wait....now these are not the medicines she is taking now. After 5 yrs, I am so familiar with her medicines...these are not the ones...what happened to all of them? Why did they stop them, so suddenly? Ok, I will check with the nurses, discreetly, before letting my child know about this. Oh! She wont bear this. What will I do, now?"
He ran to nurses station and asked them to re check............
And .................
It turned out that, the one who typed the discharge sheet, used my mom's personal details, along with a heart patients discharge sheet data. After that the nurses verified (????) it and after the main nurse cross checked (???) it, and the duty doctor countersigned(???) it, it was given to dad, by my mom's NURSE! And they didn't even apologized for this mistake. They just said "oh! We will replace it". I cant imagine, the situation if it was handed to me, and the shock of me seeing ammas diagnosis as artery-blockage! I am sorry for my dad, who for whole 15 minutes, had the worst shock in his life, who was forced to imagine all the worst conditions that could arise, and had the utter pain of passing a "shocking" news to his wife and daughter.
If my dad was an English illiterate and my mom had taken all the wrong medicines as per the wrong discharge sheet, I cant imagine further.....
I was so enraged that I wanted to complain about it to the MD of that hospital , personally.(My parents asked me NOT to go behind that!) As he wasn't present at that moment, we went home. Later I wrote a written complaint to him. I am NOT sure, whether the complaint reached him, as his staff handled his letters. Now what I am going to do is, this Saturday, I am going to meet him personally and complain this to him, even telling that the letter I wrote to him was also conveniently misplaced, by the staff!
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NOTE: Me and my mom had seen nurses exactly like F.Nightingale, in small hospitals, whose touch and words amma would say soothes all her pain. And there was this another humane nurse who took charge of the situation completely, while I was rolling and screaming in ER,when a cockroach went inside my ear.When the junior doc was too stunned to do something, the nurse quickly acted. She poured saline water into my ear, which killed the gnawing roach instantly, relieving my pain.Later they took it out and found a very badly infected ear drum, behind! It was the nurse's experience that saved me rather than the docs bookish knowledge.
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Its horrible!!! that'S all i can say.. but not really surprising, as it is seen, that most of the hospitals generally are not at all well organized. But afterall, it can harm one's life.. I really wish and hope you get to bring enough and serious attention of the hospital authorities towards this instance!
ReplyDeletethis is not a surprise for me swathi.i experienced the worst of it.omg if i think of it i will never leave my home.i was hospitalised in dhaka in the best hospital of bangladesh.n imagine i was alone without any1 atleast to get water for me in nights.the sad part was not the nurses alone was bad even the doctors daily they would come n investigate whtz the problem.i just had fever.but those guys to make money was keepin me hospitalised.
ReplyDeletethe sad part here was all doctors n nurses were indians n tht too mostly from kerala :(.
its very sad to there ppl behaving carelessely.the worst part was ur cockroach incident swathi.
Luckily I got good nurses for my wife. They took care of wife nicely for 10 days. Not all nurses are to be blamed and not all nurses are to be appreciated.
ReplyDeletetht really is very bad...if this is da state of affairs of our hospitals..i dont think instead of us gettin bttr...our ailments wud worsen i bet on it......this thing.....da entire system needs to b changed....well wishing ur mom fast recovery...:)
ReplyDeletebyee c ya n tc....
My Mathaji is a doc..have heard worse stories of both docs and nurses. As u mentioned, good and bad are there.
ReplyDeleteBtw, had a similar story like the cockroach's..a beetle got into a child's( our relative) ear and it was clinging and biting inside...he was taken to the ENT specialist who was poking and prodding the beetle and the child was crying like anything.Finally his mom phoned my Mathaji who suggested that anaesthtic drops be put in the ear immediately.The beetle was 'unconscious' in a moment and out came it!The prob here, my gr8 Mathaji says,is that young docs don't have any practical knowledge or 'wisdom' thru experiance.Dependence on diagnostic instruments has increased while the humane touch is gone...
OMG! Good that your dad knows English. Write us about your meeting with the MD.
ReplyDeleteYour answer to Niranjan's Comment-
"niranjan----and all these happened when my mom being the Chairman of that hospital's first cousin !!!! then what about common ppl???"- Read it again!!!!
niranjan----and all these happened when my mom being the first cousin of that hospital's Chairman !!!! then what about others who are not relatives to the MD???
ReplyDeletePradeep---i am so ashmed to hear that even in Bengladesh, keralite docs do like that!!!! i have heard doc performing unwanted surgeries in pvt hospitals to get more money. personally, havent exprnced or may be i was mercifully ignorant!!
in my cockroach incident, actually the nurse saved me, though her act seemed a bit barbaric,then. when qualified docs just stood and watched me roll in pain, that nurse was the only human being who had the urge to do something, unharmful, to ease my torture. her act killed the roach, so that it stopped gnawing my ear drum, which later was infected badly.
sekhar---u r correct. i have seen nurses like angels, ie why i mentioned it in the foot-note.
jyothi---thanks dear...better remember this incident, whenever u r in a hospital...
prasanth----u r very correct. if i was screaming worse than a child, then how painful that child must have been!!. it was simple and practical thing for the nurse(and ur Mathaji) to make the roach, stop gnawing my inner ear, first. and ur theory abt young docs are 100% correct.
maddy---oh! thanks alot for pointing out my mistake. in my over enthusiasm, i messed up the whole sentence...thanks again!
It's a good thing your father understood what was written. Even here some people just take their doctor's word for it even if they don't understand and never question anything about their diagnosis.
ReplyDeleteMy mother had a heartattack and stints were put in her arteries to keep them open, later they had to do surgery because they became blocked again and they (the DOCTORS) ended up puncturing her STOMACH! Needless to say she was in intensive care for a few months and it was touch and go for quite some time... My question is how do you puncture someone's STOMACH during a HEART operation??? :/ Just ANOTHER reason why I don't trust "professionals." :/ :/
My mom is a nurse and working in a hospital she has more than once quarrel with doctors who acted like they knew everything even if they don't.. Her experience made my brother and I more attentive to the way they react in hospital. But that attention did not prevent my dad to die. He had had a heart surgery and if the operations well pretty well he did not recover that easily. One day he was at hospital for a check and they saw the situation had worsened but his doctor was on holiday. Like if there was only one doctor in that huge hospital. So they sent him back saying they would check with his surgeon and call him back. The very next morning he had a heart attack due to that inflammation they had seen the day before... Keeping him at hospital may not have saved his life but at they least they would have been able to react quicker and try more. So for me getting to trust my doctor is not an easy thing. and I can't understand how theu did not apologize for the mistake they did with your discharge sheet. Don't they realise we are human being with feelings and not just machine to be repared?...
ReplyDeleteLISA---i am shocked that such cases happen in US!!! here we Indians are expected to see such incidents though when it happens, it makes our blood boil. even i cant imagine, why they operated ur mom's STOMACH for an artery block!!!!!!! really LISA, i cant take it...u shud have gone to the court....this is unpardonable crime.....so much to play with a human life!!! ppl are frantic to save lives of stray dogs...and what about humans, not even that value???????
ReplyDeleteCATHERINE---i am so shocked to know that things more serious happen to others,too. what you have pointed is exactly true. Other docs just dont take the responsibility of another doc's patient, even if he/she is in critical condition. i dont know where their supposed to be humane-nature disappears? every one wants to save their own ass that they just turn their back, to human lives that can otherwise be saved. why dont they just think that it can be their own dad/mom/brother/sis, tomorrow?? or will they do this thing to their own mom or dad? human life is just a "case" for them...and nothing else...
Oh, they didn't do surgery on her stomach, just punctured it while doing surgery on her heart, that is why it's such a travesity. My mother/father are taking this court, but so far right now it's just talks between lawyers, so who knows when/if she will ever see anything out of this. :-/
ReplyDeleteThings like this do happen here, more often than you would realise though... When I was little the doctors wanted to operate (biopsy) on me (my legs) JUST TO SEE IF THEY CAN FIND OUT WHAT'S WRONG... I am so glad my mother left the decision up to me (I was around 8 or so) and I opted against it. They thought my mother was crazy for letting ME decide, but i had already had too many friends who've been through operations that were supposed to "help" them and instead only made them worse.