Tuesday, December 19, 2006

What was the right decision ?!!

During the past week, we had some hard time with one of the, supposingly, patients at the hospital. I'm a dentist ( an oral surgeon lately ).
That person is a drug addict, who came to our department ( surgery ) complaining that he is in severe pain because of a fractured jaw. On examining that patient, it turned out that his jaw was farctured around a month ago ( now he's complaining !!! ) and that there's no pain whatsover.
So, he was schedueled for surgery in order to fix his broken jaw. With every schedueled appointement, he never shows up. He appears 2 or 3 days later with the same cause of absence, one of my relatives passed away, every single time. This happened 3 times.
The surgery team decided that such patient, shall not receive the surgery because of the following reasons: 1) His procedure is complicated & requires his full cooperation , which is not present at all. 2) His treatment plan is expensive & mostly will be paid by the government's money i.e: someone else (who cares ) can benifit from it. 3) His procedure is time and effort consuming i.e: many other patients' who actually care can receive the surgeons' attention and help.
Today, that patient showed up again ( a couple of days late for an appointment as usual) and was informed of the decision. He went into a severe state of rage and was on his way to attack one of the surgeons, hadn't it been for the interference of the security men who took him away.

After that incident was over, I never stopped thinking about the situation.
Did that man deserve another chance ( he was given more than one ) ? Or, giving attention to the people who care is way more important ?

p.s: I was in no position to take a decision.



UPDATES:

Dr. M, the head of the surgery department, decided to give the guy another chance. I really hope, he makes use out of it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you believe that those sentenced to death should be forced to donate all their inner organs to patients on waiting list with great potential and that would be the way they are killed (heart and brain donations)?

Asrar El Banat said...

If this situation had happened abroad do you know what would be the scenario?
Awalan every hospital abroad has a psychologist responsible 4 figuring out what's mentally wrong with patients..
I think this person needed help..whether he knows how to get it is not the issue..
But he is an addict AND having a jaw fracture..
Do u think he should be left to the street?
I'm not blaming u.
I'm blaming the system.