Relatives blame hospital for traffic cop’s death

Dec 16, 2013 News

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– claim intern accidentally punctured patient’s lung

A close friend of a young traffic policeman says that she watched him die from minor injuries he sustained in an accident, due to a series of blunders by two inexperienced doctors at the West Demerara Regional Hospital.
Constable Shakeel Anderson, 18, was admitted to the West Demerara Regional Hospital on November13, last, with a broken leg and dislocated shoulder, after crashing his motorcycle on the East Bank Essequibo public road.
A close family friend, who said she was present the entire time Anderson was being treated, alleged that she witnessed a series of mistakes by an intern and other staff which eventually led to the young policeman succumbing some hours later to what had initially appeared to be minor injuries.

Details have now emerged which suggest that despite two X-rays, staff at the facility failed to realize that Anderson had a broken rib.
The broken rib reportedly pierced Anderson’s lung when an intern was setting his dislocated shoulder. It is alleged that this caused Anderson to bleed internally, and the family friend said that the same intern made matters worse while attempting to stop the internal bleeding.
Anderson, who was reportedly lucid when he arrived at the hospital, succumbed despite efforts by staff at a private hospital to save him. Reports suggest that no senior physicians were present when Constable Anderson was being treated and the young policeman was left in the care of two interns.
Contacted by Kaieteur News last Thursday, Regional Health Officer Dr. Nadine Coleman said that she knew of the case but declined further comment. Kaieteur News also received a similar response from the Hospital’s Chief Medical Officer, as well as one of the doctors who treated Constable Anderson.
Anderson, who was seconded to the Parika Police Station, was towing a friend, 22-year-old Sadiki Fraser, when they crashed on the Zeelugt, East bank Essequibo Public Road.
A female relative of Fraser’s said the two young men were first taken to the Leonora Cottage Hospital, where X-rays revealed that Anderson, of Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo, sustained a broken left leg, and a dislocated hip and shoulder. Sadiki Fraser reportedly sustained a fractured leg and was bleeding heavily from puncture wounds to the same limb. The woman is of the view that Anderson’s friend was in worse condition, and she alleged that it was Anderson who was trying to cheer up his injured friend.
The woman said that after about two hours, the two injured men were transferred by ambulance to the Leonora Cottage Hospital to the West Demerara Regional Hospital. She alleged that further X-rays were done, since the staff felt that the X-rays at the Leonora Cottage Hospital were improperly taken.
The relative said that she was with the two young men for the entire period when they were being treated, and witnessed everything that occurred at the hospitals. She alleged that she also was present when the staff allowed a porter to re-set Constable Anderson’s dislocated hip.
“They said that Shakeel’s hip and shoulder had slipped out and that his leg was broken. They took him to the Emergency Room, spread a mattress on the floor and placed a cloth in his mouth. Then a porter put his (Anderson’s) leg on his shoulder and pulled it to put the hip back in place.”
But according to the woman, the policeman’s condition worsened drastically when a male intern reset the dislocated shoulder. “From the time he fix the shoulder, Shakeel’s chest started to swell,” she alleged. A female doctor diagnosed that the patient had sustained a punctured lung. At that point, two other physicians attended to Anderson and suggested that he was bleeding internally.
Kaieteur News was told that the physicians attempted to get a female technician to take another X-ray of the patient. By then, it was after 16:00 hrs and the X-ray technician allegedly informed a relative who was sent to call her that her shift had ended. “She said she has to cook her husband’s dinner and she only works up to four o’clock and is was already six,” the friend alleged.
She said that one of the physicians consulted a manual, then made a small incision in the policeman’s side and inserted a tube to drain the blood. However, the relative alleged that the doctor had to make a second incision after apparently blundering the procedure.
Anderson was reportedly then given oxygen. Kaieteur News understands that relatives of the injured men then requested that the patients be transferred to the Woodlands Hospital. The doctor who had inserted the tube accompanied the patients in an ambulance.
The family friend alleged that when they arrived, a physician at the private hospital informed the West Demerara Hospital staff that they had inserted the draining tube incorrectly and that Anderson was still bleeding internally. The tube was reportedly also the wrong size and even the apparatus to give the patient oxygen was malfunctioning, the woman said.
“Then the doctor showed how the tube should be inserted and the blood started to come out,” the woman said. But by then, Anderson’s condition had worsened and he succumbed some 15 minutes later, the still-distraught friend said.
“The doctor (at Woodlands) said that it is sad that he had to die when his injury was not life-threatening.” The woman is related to Anderson’s injured friend, Sadiki Fraser, and said that he is still traumatized by the ordeal.
“It’s one month (since the tragedy) and it’s bringing back everything,” a relative of Anderson’s told Kaieteur News.
A source with several years experience as a health care professional said that the case highlighted the poor quality of health care in Region Three.
“The management is very poor in this Region, if they can’t manage an emergency transfer. They played around for four and a half hours with these young men’s lives. They arrived at around 2.15 p.m. at the Leonora Cottage Hospital, then were transferred to the West Demerara Regional Hospital without a proper diagnosis. Is this what health care has turned to?”
The source also expressed the view that the case also highlighted the need for interns to work under the guidance of experienced doctors before being allowed to work unsupervised.

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