Friday, August 10, 2007

Bloody

I can't forget the face of a friend and a colleague, a doctor who worked with me in King Hussein Cancer Center, a day after he was beaten up by the sons of a patient he had seen before in the Emergency Room.

He saw the patient who was terminally ill with cancer, and after carefully evaluating her case he figured that there was no reasons for he to be admitted to the hospital since the hospital has nothing more to offer.
He passed this information to her 10+ sons and relatives waiting outside who were still in denial of the whole condition. They insisted on her coming in to the hospital. My friends refused because of the shortage of beds and more importantly because there was nothing else to offer to a lady who has cancer in every cell of her body.

The sons followed him upstairs and, while the young tough security guy was watching, the doctor was beaten up and developed a large hematoma (blood collection) behind one of his eyes and a brain concussion.

The patient died 2 days later, given that and in addition to a cup of coffee the case was dismissed.

That was not one incident.

Twenty-seven doctors were beaten up this year in Jordanian hospitals.

The last incident occurred in al-Basheer 3 days ago when two doctors and one nurse were beaten up by 4 brothers.

It's still happening, and will keep happening.

I can tell you something: a doctor will never feel comfortable or think properly if he knows there's a ganweh waiting for him in the visitor's area.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am dismayed to read your post "Bloody" we claim and propagate that we are the best nation God created Etc. ,may be we were ,as to date the culture of "3antarieat" still is the dominant one ,not only in Amman , but through out the Arab world ,education is not the cure !!! But starting to teach and implement good values ,it is the home and family .How to do that and what is the best medium to use to reach home and family ?only God knows. this is not a Friday speech ! we have to start in one way or the other ,to try and change ours and their's attitude , from 3antarieat to reason that prevails to day through out the advanced countries .

Anonymous said...

Boggles my mind. The DOCTOR pays the price for telling the truth about the woman's disease? JO had a good article about this a couple months ago.

Hareega said...

nadim... I totally agree that education is not the choice. The uneducated are frequently uncivilized.
Sometimes all what you need is good security. In US hospitals there are always dangerous people, every ER had some of the most dangerous criminals getting treatment in it, but there's always very tight security and if you felt there's any danger of a violent person you can a code green and you'll have the lovely security guards with their trained german shepeards by your side in less than 30 seconds.

kinzi.... if you have the link to that it would be great, if not that's fine. Yes doctors pay a big price sometimes (like an eye or a brain injury...)

Anonymous said...

i myself was abou to beat a doctor and thought of beating him nd spittin gin his face twice at least.doctors are hopeless cases(some),the one i wanted to beat was responsble of the death my uncle,he wrongly diagnosed him 3 times, he used to come see him once a week if he came to the hospital, i cant forget the day of my uncle's surgery he was smoking and was so arrogant to tell us the truth that they made a medical mistake!
i want to beat him up,i still remeber that he went for a vacation for one week without notifying the patient or his famly of his absence or giving us the name of the substitue doctor.
i wanted to spite in his face when he lyed telling us that no other hospital will accept such a case while other hospitals did..
lyers,i will never forgive him and i memorize his name because he has mu uncle's soul tied round his neck, a soul that will ask god to punish himfor on the day of judgement

Hareega said...

Anonymous dude I'm so sorry to hear that, I totally believe you and I've heard stories like that. I've seen doctors in Jordan behaving like that and to them medicine is a way to get money and not help people.
I hate these doctors as much as you do, because they taranish our reputation.
However, violence does not solve anything, and with all these beatings going on doctors (all of them, not just those after money) would demnad very restricted family visits or would even fear telling the patients any bad news or explaining anything to them or rejecting patients with chronic or complicated illnesses.

The soultion might be to enforce laws on doctors to behave ethically. The laws are there but they're never enforced.

Bilalٍ said...

"given that and in addition to a cup of coffee the case was dismissed"
Please, cant we stop the cup of coffee thing! Its 2007