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The doctor was within her rights in refusing to re-write a prescription

Jan 29, 2012 Letters

 

 

Dear Editor,
This letter is in response to an article “This medical doctor should be fired” that appeared in your daily paper on January 18th by your columnist Freddie Kissoon. In the article Mr. Kissoon describes an incident that occurred some time ago at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation where a medical doctor at the Accident and Emergency Department refused to write a prescription for his friend who happened to be a patient with a heart condition.
I hope that Mr. Kissoon gets a chance to read this letter and understand why the doctor could not write the prescription. For the purpose of disclosure I will offer that I am a medical doctor that worked at the same institution allowing me a little more insight.
Firstly, there is an issue of bureaucracy that prevents doctors at the Accident and Emergency Department of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation from writing a prescription to any patient if that prescription is to be filled at the institution’s pharmacy.
To simply put it, prescriptions have to bear a clinic stamp if they are to be filled at the institution’s pharmacy. Patients from the Accident and Emergency Department get their medications because it is written on their charts and not on a prescription. To be told otherwise by the head of pharmacy, Mr. Kissoon and the patient were misinformed, or they misunderstood.
Secondly, there is an issue of ethics that prevents a doctor from just simply writing a prescription that he himself/herself did not recommend.
As an analogy, let us imagine that a reporter wrote an article based on an exchange with him and the President of Guyana but the file was lost and that reporter was unavailable. Now let us further imagine that at deadline for printing the editor sends the reporter’s wife (who happens to remember the contents of the letter) to your office for you to re-write the letter and bear your signature.
Would you refuse? I agree this is a silly analogy but I hope the larger picture is seen – in dealing with patients’ lives re-writing a prescription for medications solely based on the patient’s memory is both unethical and dangerous.
I do not know if this was explained to the patient and what plans were made for the patient to get his medications, but based on Mr. Kissoon’s article the situation could’ve been handled better.
We all know that Guyana is a beautiful country plagued with so many issues and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation is not immune, and though the patient had a run-around to get his medications, I hope Mr. Kissoon understands why the doctor refused to write the prescription. It would be professional of him to offer an apology, a retraction, or at least a correction.
Rondell Benn

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