Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Unfair To Blame Doctor

Recently, I noticed that our media and public possess bad impression abou doctors, which may not be true. Here are few example and my thought (may not reflect the real condition, but just my opinion)
  1. A child was brought to A&E and noted severely ill and was resuscitated at a district hospital.(In fact, the parent did bring the child seek treatment from a GP and was adviced to seek treatment at major general hospital a day before, however parents didn't do so due to unknown reason) After resuscitation, patient was intubated (ventilated by machine) and awaiting for transfer. Sadly all major general hospital nearby all running out of ventilator, thus patient was kept in the district hospital while the district doctors trying their best to call all over Malaysia to look for ventilator. Unfortunately, patient didn't make it and passed away after 4 hours in district hospital. Family can't understand why patient was not referred to major general hospital at the very first place. But the truth is, the doctors in general hospital refuse to accept this poor child in view of no ventilator available. So, whose fault and who to blame? (I myself had experience of calling whole country looking for ventilator, i've called Hospital Kangar -->Penang-->Ipoh-->KL-->Melaka-->Seremban-->Johor Baru and end up no ventilator available and patient passed away in my A&E. I was upset, but what can i do if our government not willing to invest more money in health care to provide more ventilator for public?)
  2. A child was brought in death (no sign of life on arrival) into a private hospital and the doctors there tried to resuscitate but fail to revive the patient. As cause of death can't be determined, a post mortem is mandatory for cause of death. Parents were told to bring the body to government general hospial for post mortem (as private hospital does not offer post mortem service when medicolegal is an issue), the parents misunderstood  that the private doctors ask them to bring the "Living" child to government hospital by their own and died on the way to government hospital, which in fact, the child already died long time ago.
  3.  A newspaper editor claimed that a wellknown doctor set a high charges for consultation and causing poor patients losing the chance to seek advice. Well, does he mean that doctor should not charge patient by giving professional advice? So how about other profession like lawyer? If he think the poor deserve the same opportunity for consultation, i would rather say that it should be depend on the doctor own judgement, case by case basis. If the doctor offering a FOC consultation session, it should be alright. If he didn't offer that, too bad but I don't think that the doctor should take the blame as "greedy".