Incompetent medical staff

wmpdd3 · 24-12-2013 02:13AM

somuj wrote: »

Broke my wrist a few years ago. Went to A and E in Mullingar and was sent home with the doc telling me it was a sprain. Got a call the next morning from the hospital saying the xray was misread and that I had to go bac for a cast. Same hospital. sent my neighbour home with chest pains and he died few hours later.

this has happened to me 4 times in Ardkeen, all breaks or chips of the none, I'm so glad someone re checks the x-rays.

aligator_am · 24-12-2013 02:14AM

LexieOnRale wrote: »

Just browsing online tonight and this article caught my eye. It's about a Dr that worked for a short period in Portlaoise Hospital and within a short space of time there's 5 different complaints about him, including reading an X-ray upside down, telling his team a patient was fine when she was in icu on oxygen and misreading a patients scan and telling the patient it was fine, when it showed abnormalities. The most scary mistake is when he was supposed to insert a cannula, he nearly sliced an OAP open with a scalpel, but was stopped when a nurse grabbed it from him.

In the enquiry she questioned if he was actually a dr at all as he lacked what even junior medical school students should know.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/nurse-snatched-scalpel-off-doctor-about-to-cut-vein-252597.html

Have you ever been on the recieving end of incompetent doctors? My dads currently in hospital and I have to say the care he has recieved has been outstanding, and I couldn't fault them at all. However; the same hospital sent my 44 year old mother home telling her she was fine, only for her to have emergency surgery less than 24 hrs later, and died two days later from an illness that would have been prevented had the hospital acted earlier.

It's scary to think that some doctors hired in Irish hospitals may not even be qualified. It really does seem to be hit and miss in regards to patient care.

Was shocked when I snapped my ankle, doctor / consultant drew a massive arrow on my bandy leg with a marker and in block capitals wrote "THIS LEG", I looked at her and she said "it happens more often than you'd think", which freaked me out.

Got a plate and 7 screws put in to heal the bone, original doctor said leave them in and you'll be grand, few months later new doc came along and insisted on removing the main screw, it's been downhill from there, wound has turned in to an ulcer and now they're talking about skin grafts!!!

I know these people do a hard job but they deal with so many people on a daily basis that it must be impossible for them to really deal with an individual, in fairness I'm probably biased after all this messing around.

qo2cj1dsne8y4k · 24-12-2013 02:15AM

I was in hospital this year, would sleep on a bed of nails so when the consultant came around and woke me up, all I could see was about 8 faces all peering at me. Some fright to get when i woke, I thought I was dying.

ProfessorPlum · 24-12-2013 02:37AM

aligator_am wrote: »

Was shocked when I snapped my ankle, doctor / consultant drew a massive arrow on my bandy leg with a marker and in block capitals wrote "THIS LEG", I looked at her and she said "it happens more often than you'd think", which freaked me out.

Got a plate and 7 screws put in to heal the bone, original doctor said leave them in and you'll be grand, few months later new doc came along and insisted on removing the main screw, it's been downhill from there, wound has turned in to an ulcer and now they're talking about skin grafts!!!

I know these people do a hard job but they deal with so many people on a daily basis that it must be impossible for them to really deal with an individual, in fairness I'm probably biased after all this messing around.

Sounds like you had a non union of your original fracture (ie it just wasn't healing). The screw was removed to cause some movement at the fracture site and encourage new bone to grow and for your fracture to heal. You should discuss it with your surgeon - if the above is the case it was absolutely the right thing to do.

ProfessorPlum · 24-12-2013 02:44AM

A Neurotic wrote: »

It's hard not to when you're sent to take a history or perform an exam (purely for your own practice, not for anything essential to someone's care) and:

- Patient A is gone for a scan, so you head to another ward to see patient B
- Patient B is having a nap, so upstairs to another you saw on rounds
- Patient C is just tucking in to dinner

In my experience, loads of students have no problem waking someone or interrupting their meal to spend half an hour asking them to regurgitate, again, what brings them to hospital and to go through the motions, again, of a physical exam. It makes me very uncomfortable.

Clinical experience is of course the best way to learn medicine, and I love learning on the wards, I just think that sometimes we ask a lot of people who are already probably pretty fed up with seeing a variety of health professionals on a given day. Most people are wonderfully accommodating and eager to help us learn, which is amazing, but I personally believe that people should have the right to tell us to bugger off if they want, in the clinic or on the wards.

Anyway, sorry for the off-topicness. My own experience of doctors and nurses, from a student's point of view, is that they're incredible. Can't say I've ever come across one who hasn't been completely on the ball, and when you're helping to look after up to 30 people, that's saying something.

It's great to see you have an empathy for your patients, but remember that your job right now is to make yourself the best doctor that you can be (so you don't end up at the butt of an AH thread) and that means seeing patients.
I can understand you don't want to be disturbing them, but how many patients on your service right now? and how many students? The odds are definitely in their favour! And from personal experience of being an inpatient, having a nap often results from boredom! Unless they've had a proceedure or sth, and the nursing staff can usually point you in the direction of weather they are up for a visit from a student or not. I'd definitely let them have their dinner though

Good luck with it.

aligator_am · 24-12-2013 02:58AM

ProfessorPlum wrote: »

Sounds like you had a non union of your original fracture (ie it just wasn't healing). The screw was removed to cause some movement at the fracture site and encourage new bone to grow and for your fracture to heal. You should discuss it with your surgeon - if the above is the case it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Nope, doc that decided to remove screw told me (and showed me x-rays of the hoof) that bone was fully healed, he just decided that screw should be removed, even though original consultant said the screw would stay in.

Screw was removed, scab formed and cracked, something got in to it and it became infected, everything went downhill from there.

I know these folks are experts in their fields but if they had left well enough alone then hopefully I'd be grand, now they're talking about skin graft, and if that doesn't work they're saying remove part of the bone, and if that doesn't work they're talking about amputation!!!

Makes for a great Christmas

kupus · 24-12-2013 03:24AM

One thing I can say about the Irish Medical System as a whole......

Thank fcuk Ive my medical insurance in another country. Thats all I have to say about them.

cuckoo · 24-12-2013 03:29AM

ProfessorPlum wrote: »

It's a courtesy to ask a patients permission for medical students to be present, and of course a patient has the right to ask for them not to be, but afaik, you have no right not to have a student present (in a public teaching hospital).

Even if it's a public teaching hospital patients have the right to not have students present.

stpaddy99 · 24-12-2013 04:40AM

we need to get 10000% tougher on failing uncaring incompetent negligent nhs staff.....which is not the tiny tiny minority as portrayed by cowardly liberals on the BBC........this is mass scale manslaughter. There is no other way to put it....when you take anyone to hospital really sick over 55, the first thing you will hear is DO NOT RESCUSCITATE .....this is way before you even find out whats wrong with you or your friend/relative? its insane. I warn you know, start from a position of profound caution even cynicism , these are not angels of mercy, some are nearer the grim reaper

Caledonia · 24-12-2013 10:20AM

Spare a thought for the decent doctor forced to work with an incompetent one, suddenly their work load doubles as they realise how poor this one is. They have to recheck their work and hold them back from the patients. They can't trust them clinically. I know of a case where an Irish trained first year SHO has had to lead a foreign trained Reg who was more senior as they were so so poor.
(There are some excellent docs who trained abroad but there is a general problem with the standard of medical training in places we recruited from)

One thing that gets me is that the Medical Council (and then media) go extremely hard on good doctors for one error when they aren't doing anything about the above problem.
Eg Ireland's best paediatric surgeon Martin Corbally-who did operations no other paediatric surgeon here could do-is in Bahrain. He didn't do the surgeries where the errors were made but he was the consultant in charge. He admitted he had been taking on too many cases, trying to help patients by reducing the waiting list and had made a serious mistake writing on paper after being up all night in theatre.
A Dublin female GP was also recently found guilty of poor professional performance when any doctor would admit they would not have been able to reasonably diagnose the patient based on the detail given. The headlines screamed that she missed a melon shaped mass, in smaller writing was the fact that it wasn't palpable on examination in hospital and was extremely rare.
Another good doctor, Ross Ardill who cared a lot for his patients, died in his 40s shortly after being the first doctor brought before the Medical Council. He was cleared but there was massive publicity that lead him to want to change things.

I think reviewing the competence of non EU doctors working in our hospitals would be a start. Those that are v good deserve extra career support to get on training schemes. Those that are not -it needs to be addressed. Apparently it only takes 2 days working with someone to know if they are ok as a doctor or not. Rather than letting inevitable mistakes happen this needs to be tackled.

Michael D Not Higgins · 24-12-2013 10:41AM

I had three GPs tell my mother I just had a stomach bug before being brought to hospital where the doctor pressed my abdomen and said I needed my appendix out right away.

I don't blame the GPs. They probably see dozens of people with stomach bugs every week and being 5 at the time it's likely I wasn't explaining my symptoms very well.

stpaddy99 · 24-12-2013 11:10AM

shouldn't these incompetent health workers, especially medical receptionists who often prevent people being seen or treated and lose documents or fail to inform porters of patients with mrsa, in adition to the thousands of negligent cruel incompetient pernicious nurses...these people need to go to prison in many cases

Canis Lupus · 24-12-2013 11:14AM

cuckoo wrote: »

Even if it's a public teaching hospital patients have the right to not have students present.

Given the thread we have here maybe it's for the best that a patient not have that right in order for future doctors to learn properly...

SpaceTime · 24-12-2013 11:56AM

I have a relative who is undergoing cancer treatment at a major Dublin hospital at the moment and while I couldn't really fault the treatment, I am actually fed up to the back teeth of the way they do their administration.

Every time she goes to another department in the hospital they have no idea who she is or why she's there and they never seem to be able to communicate with each other or find files.

My grandmother died of cancer a couple of years ago and was being treated in the same hospital and on a few occasions they brought her in (she could barely walk and was pretty much terminal ). They kept her for 3 or 4 hours in a waiting room without anyone even saying hello. Then sent her home because they'd lost her files!!!!!?!!?

On a few other occasions they called her in and then realised the staff weren't there to deal with her due to them being on a day off.

Also, they were calling her in for things that could have been done over the phone or by her GP.

It's infuriating to see a hospital being so uncaring and disorganised that they're dragging elderly, terminally ill patients in for absolutely no reason.

I mean, seriously who in their right mind would drag an 88+ year old woman into hospital by taxi to say see some magic consultant who never turns up?

Bog Standard User · 24-12-2013 12:44PM

my sister went to her doctors with severe abdominal cramps.... they sent her into hospital... the first doctor (irish) told her it period pains... my mother asked for a second opinion and found a nice philipino doctor there... one look at my sister and she said she wanted to do a ct scan... turns out my sister has rupture cysts (4 of them) and was suffering from septacemia and was immediately operated on to remove the cysts and put on very very powerful antibiotics. had mum took the irish's doctor's word my sister would have died.

Caledonia · 24-12-2013 01:16PM

That could have been a more senior doctor though than the initial one bog standard?
Definitely there are excellent foreign trained doctors who need a push up the career ladder but there is a pattern where their training is not of the same clinical standard and because we are so stretched for staff instead of being dismissed for incompetence they are being kept on.

cassid · 24-12-2013 04:18PM

http://news.sky.com/story/1186735/surgeon-burned-initials-on-patients-liver

What was going through his head that the surgeon thought it was ok to write his initials on the patient!!

Incompetent medical staff

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