Friday, March 14, 2008

Murder

Working in the health field made me appreciate how easy it is for people die from one single mistake. I've seen it in Jordan, I've seen it in the US. It happens in the best hospitals in the world and by the most competent doctors that you can think of. There isn't a doctor, a nurse, or a pharmacist in the world who can say s/he have not committed at least ten big mistakes in their career.
If you haven't made mistakes, that means you haven't worked long enough.

Doctors realize that hospitals can be dangerous places. Patients get a lot of studies inside hospitals and these studies pose some risk. Getting a CT-scan can cause a permanent damage to your kidneys, starting any new drug can cause a countless number of serious side-effect, and having any kind of surgery places you at risk of developing a lot of complications involving every organ in your body. Doctors try not to make thing worse by being careful, patient, and meticulous. That sometimes doesn't work, especially if you're in your 30th hour of continuous work, being overwhelmed with the number of patients you have and the hundreds of numbers and results of the several patients you have on your service. Doctors do mistakes everyday, every hour, and they usually do not admit it.

However negligence is different. Negligence is when you stop caring, when a patient is just a number you're trying to get of. Many hospitals in Jordan are poorly-equipped, which is frustrating, and that does interfere with patient care. Often, the staff are unprofessional, and some lack the sufficient knowledge needed for medical or nursing practice. But it's not all that common to see mistakes arising from negligence. It does happen, but it's not that common, and it definitely does not reach the level of negligence that Prince Hamzah's Hospital has reached.

Ali al-Hafnawi might have died from natural causes. He might have died on the table of the radiology machine, but this might not be the case, and I don't know if anyone will be able to know because those who know will not speak up.
I can see it, the King will visit, things will get better for a while, then other tragedies will occur again a few months later. This is more than negligence.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY MURDER!

Anonymous said...

Allah ytamnak, so there is a possibility that I might be a doctor's next mistake :\

Anyway ... PRINCE HAMZA'S HOSPITAL SHOULD BE CLOSED! How can they have the heart to play with people's lives?

I really would like to know where tax money is being spent. I mean they can fix the streets, increase doctors' salaries, provide better education in universities, improve customer service, create more job opportunities. They can do endless things with the money. Damn, with all the tax money Jordanians pay; they should at least see some of it being spent 3ala 5edmeh zai el 3alam wel nas.

Waed S. said...

This is really horrible !
people come to hospitals to get better but instead , they end up dying because some stupid doctor or nurse thought they were unworthy of his\her attention!

They should do something serious about this ! getting a new staff might work !

Hareega said...

Hala , you might be, I might as well. Thanks for mentioning raising doctors' salaries! That hasn't been done since 1997 in Jordan.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
danny said...

well man im working in another sector not in MOH so somtimes some doctors there transfer patients to us one of them start to present the case on phone my friend asked him ok doc what is glascow coma scale for ur patient and he answerd 14/15 ok doc is he stable yes but he is on mechanical ventilatoion OMG
but really the whole medical system must be reviwed after i pass the first 12-18 hours of my oncall bablish 3an jad a7oshi
lol

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