HEADACHE, no?

after a long silent, a REALLY REALLY long silent, i've just thought of blogging..

so i've decided to take baby steps ya? ;)

Today we had medical ethics in the afternoon. It was boring. All lectures are boring. But the doctor told us an incident that occured to him in Melaka General Hospital sometime back which interest me & would like to share to all..

There was once , a girl 19yo came to the hospital with a headache and was admitted at 530pm approx. The MO (medical officer) incharge was giving diagnosis of tension headache or a migraine. so anyways, they did a CTscan. At night, they did Night Rounds with Specialist on call & when they reached the girl's bed, MO mentioned that this girl is just having a headache , and brought the specialist to another bed, ignoring the kid. Ignoring the CTscan report done earlier that evening , too.

So around 11pm, girl wanted to go to the bathroom, and as she walked out from the loo, she collapsed. GCS (glasgow coma scale) was 8/15 - which means severe , which also means patient is unconcious. And then the MO realized that he/she did not review the CTscan reports. So she(lets pretent its a SHE) view and there were intracerebral haemorrhage (bleeding in the brain). Ordered another CTscan and again, another negligent act by not intubating the patient who's GCS is 8/15. She did not follow the pt to the CTscan room as there was another case that needs her attention.

Well, by now we could guess what had happened to that poor girl.. yes, she died on the CTscan machine.. girl's dad was a businessman and uncle was a lawyer. Her uncle hesitated to keep quiet and brought the case to the court.

Case settled with compensation paid to the family from Ministry of health.. MO been sent to a very outskirt place and her pursue for masters were affected ( if u're doing masters, u would be attach to a Big hospital ).. and the Housemen under the MO were extended without pay..

????? hours hours and hours of negligence. If they were to view the CT reports during night rounds, the girl might be saved. If the girl were to be intubated when gcs was found to be severe, girl would be saved too.. is this fate? were the girl was fated to die on CT table? or would she, the MO who is a doctor be blamed for killing the patient?

Doctor ain't easy job. I'm approaching the finish line of MBBS soon, and honestly, im not ready to face the world. People make mistakes all the time, but we learn from them. Lesson for today is to NOT underestimate a HEADACHE. Every cases are important even a mild cough is important. Every patient is a someone to somebody and every patient in the ward deserves equal treatment from a Doctor.