Thursday - August 28, 2008

Paging Doctor McStupid

Here it is Peiper. I couldn’t find it at the papers you mentioned, but it was over at the Strabane Chronicle.

Naturally the larger part of the news article is about the planned lawsuit.  Gosh, I hope the kid is Ok. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

An Artigarvan mother is seeking legal advice over a blunder which saw her four-year-old daughter sent home from hospital with the wrong leg in plaster.  The shocking blunder happened on Friday evening, after four-year-old Megan Jack was knocked off her scooter as she played outside her Liscurry Gardens home in the village.  Realising the ankle was broke, Megan’s mother Rose immediately rushed her daughter to Altnagelvin’s Accident and Emergency department.

wrong leg

Speaking on Tuesday, Rose explained: “They did an x-ray on her right leg, where the bone was sticking through the ankle. But then they plastered the left leg. I was so tired that I didn’t even notice. But when we got home, Megan was still in a while (wild?) state and I tried to get her settled and gave her Nurofen. But then I noticed that the plaster was on the wrong leg and I said to my son about it.”

“I phoned Altnagelvin to check and they laughed at me. I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

The mother-of-four has been so outraged at her treatment by Altnagelvin staff that she intends to consult her solicitor on the matter.

“I had to go back to the hospital to have the plaster changed the same night and they just laughed at me again. I’m glad they find it funny because I didn’t and I will be speaking to my solicitor about this. The attitude of Altnagelvin when I phoned them was ridiculous and if I could have taken Megan to another hospital, be it Coleraine or Belfast, I would have. What has angered me the most is that they made a joke out this. You never think something like this could happen and you trust these people with your life. I took my daughter to hospital for help and I got laughed at.”

“They let me and Megan so badly down and at this point legal action is the only course of action open to me,’ Rose said.

When contacted the Western Health and Social Care Trust yesterday refused to be drawn on the possibility of legal action being taken against them. A Trust spokesman told the Strabane Chronicle that the matter had been investigated and was being treated very seriously.

I wonder who set the kid’s ankle in the first place? I bet it was one of them foreign doctors. Probably this guy:

Sorry, It Was the Wrong Foot

JIZAN, Saudi Arabia, 2 December 2007 — A careless doctor put a cast on the wrong foot of a child suffering from a broken leg, Okaz reported. The doctor insisted on putting the cast on the right foot of the child claiming that he knew best because he was the doctor. He decided the child’s right foot was broken just by feeling it and not X-raying it. The father returned home with his child thinking that the doctor had done his job, but was shocked when he later discovered that the wrong foot had been treated. The father then angrily returned to the hospital where the errant doctor corrected his mistake.

Just how hard is it to ask a kid which leg hurts? Or to do some simple diagnosis, like touching it? Or seeing which leg goes sideways, or is all swollen? The Saudi story is bad enough, but the English one, a compound fracture, that takes the cake. What they both should take is the medical licenses. Forgive the pun, but bone heads like these two docs the world doesn’t need!

Strabane is in the north end of Ireland, between Donegal and Londonderry, well west of Belfast

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 08:55 PM   
Filed Under: • Medical •  
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