1. Once my brother was suffering from fever and we went to a St.John's hospital in Bangalore for check-up. The OPD was crowded but we were able to meet a doctor (mind you, not an intern but a proper middle-aged doctor). He asked us to get a test for Malaria done. The report was negative and we met him after getting the report. This is what he said...I remember each word clearly..." Viral fever doesn't last so long and he doesn't have Malaria, so it MUST BE Typhoid." With this he put my brother on antibiotics for typhoid for 3 days.I asked him that incase his fever comes down should I stop the medicines. He said we should complete the course. We simply followed him. That night his fever came down and he was feeling better. However, in the middle of the night his temperature came below normal and he started losing his consciousness. He started muttering some stuff which we couldn't comprehend and acting a little weird. We assumed it could be due to high fever that he went into delirium and continued the dosage of all medicines as instructed.
The next day his conditioned worsened and we took him to another hospital. He was diagnosed with jaundice which was worsened due to the antibiotics which were not needed in the first place. He didn't have any Typhoid. A simple case of jaundice was worsened such that he was hospitalised for 18 full days. As per this 2nd hospital, he had gone into Hepatic Coma which can have severe consequences.
2. My uncle is a diabetes patient. Doctors also diagnosed him with anaemia. They decided that he would require blood transfusion in order to improve his blood count. They transfused 3 units of blood in a normal way. For the last unit some illiterate untrained nurse was deployed. Instead of setting the rate of blood flow to 8-9 hours per unit, she completed the transfusion within 2 hours. His body could not accept this (which I think is quite natural) and he suffered a heart failure. On screaming and shouting at the hospital staff, all the doctors came running and somehow managed the situation. Needless to say a simple case was complicated due to sheer negligence.
The same uncle later suffered a stroke and partial paralysis on Vijaya Dashmi day, 2011.He was under guidance of doctors of Apollo Hospital, Kolkata but was not in Kolkata at that time. His son called up the concerned cardiologist. The response he received was shocking. The doc says," Do not DISTURB me with NON-EMERGENCY calls on a HOLIDAY". Hello Mr. Doctor, if people in your profession start celebrating Holidays then God himself has to descend to take care of patients. And please, non-medicos like us know that Stroke and Paralysis are not Non-Emergency. All we expected from you was advise as to what step should be taken immediately as we could rush to your hospital coz we TRUSTED you and BELIEVED that you would be of some help. Alas, that was our mistake.
3. I recently went to an elderly doctor for treatment and she asked me to get some tests and an ultrasound scan to be done. She told me that since NONE of the testing centres were reliable I must go to a specific pathology ( a reputed one in the city) and a particular Scanning Centre. With this she scribbled something on the prescription and asked me to come with all reports. As an educated and literate person I asked her exactly what blood tests were to be done. To this question she looked at me with a big frown and question mark on her face. Then very rudely she said "You just go and give this slip at the reception, they will understand what I have written here." I crumbled up the prescription on leaving her clinic and never went back. Yes, I am not a doctor myself but it is my right to know what you are going to do with my precious blood. After seeing SMJ, I think it must've been one of those Basin Tests :). Thank God I saved a few ounces of my blood and a lot of my money that day.
4. Now a funny one, but worth mentioning. There is this hospital which is attached to the organisation I work for. I went for a check-up and it all started with, yes you guessed it right- THE BLOOD TESTS. So this hospital is a little technologically advanced (they think so). Here when you meet the doctor, he/she enters all your details in their database. Then they type in some tests which you must undertake to facilitate diagnosis. Then you are directed to the blood collection centre of the hospital. They don't give you a slip as to what tests need to be done. So there I was, waiting for the pathology staff to collect my blood sample. He took a print out of the tests I needed to take and told me it would be roughly 2000 rupees for all the tests. I had no option and asked him to proceed. As he was collecting the sample I saw one of the tests was mentioned as "Blood Grouping Test". Just to make sure that this wasn't as simple as it sounded I asked him what test this was. The staff said that this was to determine my Blood Group! I said I already knew it then why this was required. He asked, "Are you SURE?" Oh come one, this has been done several times, when I was a kid and admitted to school, when I applied for my Driving License, when I joined the job. It cost me 100 bucks, fine, but it's not always about the money. It's just the intention of the doctors. What do they think they are doing? Fooling us??? Ridiculous!!!
Last Sunday's episode of SMJ triggered me to jot down some of my personal experiences. Some related only to money while the other serious enough to cost a near and dear one's life.
Lakhs of Indians may not be aware of what ways there are that Medicos are making a fool of them. I consider myself lucky that I am at least able to figure out when something fishy is going on. I am at least able to cross-question and link stuff to my Bio classes at school and understand what they are trying to convince me with. I am lucky that I can raise a voice. Yet when I visit a doctor now I really go in with fingers crossed hoping that it would not be one of those cases again where simple things are complicated and lives risked.
Just one message to all those ill-doctors with ill- intentions- "The Doc of all Docs awaits you up there, you aren't born to live forever either!So, Get Well Soon!"
The next day his conditioned worsened and we took him to another hospital. He was diagnosed with jaundice which was worsened due to the antibiotics which were not needed in the first place. He didn't have any Typhoid. A simple case of jaundice was worsened such that he was hospitalised for 18 full days. As per this 2nd hospital, he had gone into Hepatic Coma which can have severe consequences.
2. My uncle is a diabetes patient. Doctors also diagnosed him with anaemia. They decided that he would require blood transfusion in order to improve his blood count. They transfused 3 units of blood in a normal way. For the last unit some illiterate untrained nurse was deployed. Instead of setting the rate of blood flow to 8-9 hours per unit, she completed the transfusion within 2 hours. His body could not accept this (which I think is quite natural) and he suffered a heart failure. On screaming and shouting at the hospital staff, all the doctors came running and somehow managed the situation. Needless to say a simple case was complicated due to sheer negligence.
The same uncle later suffered a stroke and partial paralysis on Vijaya Dashmi day, 2011.He was under guidance of doctors of Apollo Hospital, Kolkata but was not in Kolkata at that time. His son called up the concerned cardiologist. The response he received was shocking. The doc says," Do not DISTURB me with NON-EMERGENCY calls on a HOLIDAY". Hello Mr. Doctor, if people in your profession start celebrating Holidays then God himself has to descend to take care of patients. And please, non-medicos like us know that Stroke and Paralysis are not Non-Emergency. All we expected from you was advise as to what step should be taken immediately as we could rush to your hospital coz we TRUSTED you and BELIEVED that you would be of some help. Alas, that was our mistake.
3. I recently went to an elderly doctor for treatment and she asked me to get some tests and an ultrasound scan to be done. She told me that since NONE of the testing centres were reliable I must go to a specific pathology ( a reputed one in the city) and a particular Scanning Centre. With this she scribbled something on the prescription and asked me to come with all reports. As an educated and literate person I asked her exactly what blood tests were to be done. To this question she looked at me with a big frown and question mark on her face. Then very rudely she said "You just go and give this slip at the reception, they will understand what I have written here." I crumbled up the prescription on leaving her clinic and never went back. Yes, I am not a doctor myself but it is my right to know what you are going to do with my precious blood. After seeing SMJ, I think it must've been one of those Basin Tests :). Thank God I saved a few ounces of my blood and a lot of my money that day.
4. Now a funny one, but worth mentioning. There is this hospital which is attached to the organisation I work for. I went for a check-up and it all started with, yes you guessed it right- THE BLOOD TESTS. So this hospital is a little technologically advanced (they think so). Here when you meet the doctor, he/she enters all your details in their database. Then they type in some tests which you must undertake to facilitate diagnosis. Then you are directed to the blood collection centre of the hospital. They don't give you a slip as to what tests need to be done. So there I was, waiting for the pathology staff to collect my blood sample. He took a print out of the tests I needed to take and told me it would be roughly 2000 rupees for all the tests. I had no option and asked him to proceed. As he was collecting the sample I saw one of the tests was mentioned as "Blood Grouping Test". Just to make sure that this wasn't as simple as it sounded I asked him what test this was. The staff said that this was to determine my Blood Group! I said I already knew it then why this was required. He asked, "Are you SURE?" Oh come one, this has been done several times, when I was a kid and admitted to school, when I applied for my Driving License, when I joined the job. It cost me 100 bucks, fine, but it's not always about the money. It's just the intention of the doctors. What do they think they are doing? Fooling us??? Ridiculous!!!
Last Sunday's episode of SMJ triggered me to jot down some of my personal experiences. Some related only to money while the other serious enough to cost a near and dear one's life.
Lakhs of Indians may not be aware of what ways there are that Medicos are making a fool of them. I consider myself lucky that I am at least able to figure out when something fishy is going on. I am at least able to cross-question and link stuff to my Bio classes at school and understand what they are trying to convince me with. I am lucky that I can raise a voice. Yet when I visit a doctor now I really go in with fingers crossed hoping that it would not be one of those cases again where simple things are complicated and lives risked.
Just one message to all those ill-doctors with ill- intentions- "The Doc of all Docs awaits you up there, you aren't born to live forever either!So, Get Well Soon!"
2 comments:
Nice post.. This post is triggering to share my experiences with docs.. some of those were really horrible. It is time that some strict action to be taken against these money-minting ill-minded doctors...
It's just to vent out my frustration partially. Although nothing can measure upto to problems we actually faced during those tough times.
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