This doctor’s conduct should indeed have been investigated

Feb 19, 2012 Letters

Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter, “The doctor was within her rights in refusing to re-write a prescription,” (KN, Jan 29, 12). The signatory is someone who said he is a doctor by the name of Rondell Bell. I do not reply to anonymous letter-composers but there is scope in this missive here to revisit the incident I originally put in one of my columns.
If Mr. Benn is a medical doctor then I hope the institution to which he is attached immediately orders some relevant seminar for him. It is unfortunate that simple words and grammar could not have been understood by this gentleman. I doubt since I wrote about that horrendous conduct by a particular doctor, the Georgetown Hospital has carried out an investigation. The Georgetown Hospital just endures the criticisms about its mistakes and carries on as if nothing happens
A very well known person suffered a heart condition. I took him to the hospital accompanied by Mark Benschop’s girlfriend. She stayed outside while I went into the emergency room. I gave the attending doctor a statement from Dr. Sonny of the Caribbean Heart Institute. So this doctor knew what she was dealing with. She knew the patient’s ailment. She treated him, she admitted him to the ward
Months after, on a weekend, as reported in my column, he ran short of his tablets and the Medical Wing where his doctor worked was closed. The pharmacy advised us to seek the help of another doctor especially in the light of his clinic card that he had in his possession that detailed the type of pharmaceutical regime he is on. Luck was with us because the very doctor who originally looked at him was there.
Her reaction was instantaneous. She said she was not writing the prescription. She offered no advice. She didn’t seek to help. My honest opinion of this lady is that she is an obnoxious doctor. Her attitude said it all.
Now what Benn missed completely in my column, for convenience of course, was that another doctor wrote the prescription. Another doctor knew that a life was at stake and wrote another prescription on the advice of the matron. Benn wrote in his letter that he hopes I understand after reading his explanation why the doctor refused our request. Nothing in his confusing rambling touches the point as to why a doctor, facing a heart patient who ran out of his tablets, could not have written the document or sought help for him. She just turned us away. Benn could write his nonsense because another doctor intervened and saved the gentleman’s life
There is nothing to convince me that similar incidents have not happened at the Georgetown Hospital and poor people just died because of the horrible maladministration by medical personnel at the Georgetown Hospital. There is talk all the time in Georgetown circles about how a prominent hospital is too expensive. But people are going to beg, steal or borrow to go to private institution because they know they will be treated like animals at the Georgetown Hospital
The danger about the Georgetown Hospital is that once you enter that institution, the doctors know they are dealing with poor people who have no status and they mistreat them. I know of cases where relatives told me the doctors examined, admitted the patient and wouldn’t even talk to them about what the diagnosis was. I had terrible fights with all types of doctors at the Georgetown Hospital over the open contempt they display to their patients.
There are doctors at the Georgetown Hospital that should not have been trained in the science of saving human lives because they do not seem to have that humanity in them. Law and medicine are traditionally viewed as status occupations. But many doctors at the Georgetown Hospital don’t care to behave like people trained to save lives. They just want the status of being a medical doctor
And the administration of the Hospital is so short staffed, that they refuse to institute disciplinary procedures. But why do that when it is poor people you are dealing with and poor people just accept their fate and die
Frederick Kissoon

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