Medical malpractice

Feb 06, 2020 Editorial

Six years later and there is learning of the horrors endured by a sick patient who eventually succumbed. It could have been any citizen, but usually more the fate of the poor, the unrepresented, the vulnerable. As this publication reported in the article titled, “Shocking details of death of man, 74, only now revealed in Medical Council report of 2014,” there is cause for concern. It betrays reason that this specific case is the only instance where such a terrible failure was allowed to exist in silence, apparent cover-up, and still unaddressed injustice.
This is not limited to backwater Guyana, but is present globally, even in watchful societies. It is just that it is believed to be more prevalent here, more papered over, more quickly and efficiently handled, through closing of ranks by medical professionals and institutions.
Many citizens have heard the stories, or have been privy to the guts and gore of such medical malpractices, from being insiders (family members) or eyewitnesses (interested parties) to the ineptitude of practitioners, the practiced individual and institutional retreats characterised by information blackouts, and the failure to provide satisfaction for wrongs.
It may be no exaggeration to state that some of our medical people are more dangerous than reckless minibus drivers or marauding bandits terrorising. There are good and skilled doctors and nurses, but those qualities fade into oblivion when they seek shelter in distance and vacuums that pretend to know nothing.
Their personal and medical ethics are sabotaged and sacrificed for continuity, for the team, for progress and prosperity, when they stay quiet.
This is so even when some of them rise to the level of involvement in oversight agencies like medical councils. The evidence is there: in the years and decades of professional (and unlicensed) medical interventions in this country, there are few, if any, reports and cases that make into the public domain about the malpractices that contribute to crippling, impoverishing, and dying.
It is either that the practice of medicine in this land is so impeccable that there is nothing negative that could qualify for sanctioning, or here is continuing suffocation of such episodes into nonexistence.
There are those amongst us, who have heard, or been observers, of the less seasoned doctors, who do not instill confidence, who make obvious mistakes, but for which nothing happens.
There are those troubling reports of wrong medicines, improper surgical procedures, and the actual procedures that were botched. Yet there is this pristine blanket of medical perfection that graces consciousness and country. Clearly, some people, more than a few of them, are getting away with murder, and repeatedly, if not in plain sight, too.
It is not unreasonable to suspect that it is the same dirty, shabby story in the knowledgably sleazy attorney field. They make powerful promises, they collect exorbitant sums of money, and they either fail to deliver, or they misrepresent, or they are just not present.
It is down the tubes and up the creek for those gullible seekers of legal protections, who fall into their hands. Some of our lawyers play both sides against the middle, some of them sellout to the whole system, some of them buy it (or are bought) with a certain kind of cash: drug lawyers, criminal lawyers, so-called constitutional lawyers.
These are the men, who pontificate about the constitution and about governance. In fact, more than a few of these dirty chaps are among our lawmakers in the National Assembly, while there are more of them, who come in this elections season to join the club and share in the action.
It is action for which there is no committed and powerful restraining body to facilitate curative steps for serially errant legal practitioners. Like the medicine men, there is protecting, leaving all untouched and everyone intact.
Quite rightly, there is plenty talk about clean governance and ethical leadership. But the same must be present in all those watchdog bodies, be they medical, legal, commercial, or otherwise. How many of their own have they disciplined for repeated egregious wrongdoings? Governments must be condemned, but look first at self, start from within.
The protective veils of Masonic Lodges must go. Save the citizens, help this society.

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