The Hospital had the facts but sadly failed to act

Jan 26, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
The recent fatal demise of Sheniza Farouk who plummeted to her death by jumping through the third floor window of the Georgetown Public Hospital, addresses a much larger issue than just the loss of a life.
Patients have rights, even when they are in the hospital. Such rights, among many others most centrally include the right to safety with a correlative duty of hospitals to implement patient-safety measures. Hospitals that do not take specific actions to improve safety should be viewed as negligent and be subject to malpractice lawsuits when a violation of the right to safety results in injury or death.
According to newspaper reports, the deceased was determined to end her life. If this sad fact was known to others, then why were measures not instituted to counter self-harm that has eventually led to death? Were there no skilled counselors and health workers available to provide advice and counseling once this fact became known and evident? Or better still, another life-saving intervention would be to have her psychiatrically evaluated and be either transferred to a psychiatric Unit for a different level of care, or the conduction of close monitoring and observation while on the current Unit. It is imperative that the treating team in any healthcare institution follow the profession’s standard of care, assess the relative degree of risk, and form a treatment and safety plan consistent with that risk.
Sadly missing from the enigmatic jigsaw puzzle and enveloping this sad scenario is the absence of any notification of assessment or evaluation despite the fact the she was an inpatient since last December and also suffers from a chronic medical ailment. A clear message she did send indicating that she wanted her life to be brought to an end. The Hospital had the facts but sadly failed to act.
As a consequence, the hospital should be held responsible for this tragic loss of life. The duty of a hospital, (unless Guyana is different) requires it to use reasonable care to prevent a patient from committing suicide if the hospital knows the patient’s mental and emotional condition is such that a reasonably prudent person would anticipate that the individual would commit suicide unless prevented.
As the old Guyanese saying goes “cry na bring back dead” so we must now look ahead and have the Hospital Administration immediately put in place measures that would prevent and deter any such recurrence.
Here are a few recommendations:
Firstly we can start with the windows and have these replaced with tempered glass, plastic or better still render them totally inoperable, so that persons can look through but not go through. At the selfsame time it should not be forgotten that suicide risks and hazards occur on medical units too, not just Psychiatric Units. Let us make assessment standard as a national patient safety goal, not only for psychiatric patients but also those with emotional or behavioral disorders in other hospital settings. There should also be a press towards the initiation of hospitalists to take the lead in convening multidisciplinary teams to identify suicide hazards in non-psych-unit settings. And of course there should be ongoing education of hospital personnel at all levels, and
especially non-clinical ones as they would think of things—such as hazards associated with equipment or electricity, thereby thwarting any future suicide likelies.
After all, a hospital is intended to be a place where all patients should feel safe and this promise of safety and security should be uttermost in the minds of those empowered to fulfill this mandate.
Yvonne Sam

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News