The scoop

Hello!

Im sure many of us have read the recent articles involving a certain patient (thee who will not be named) and mistreatment of patients at Helen Joseph hospital. 

In a viral video patient X documented his poor treatment centred around and not limited to: 

1. No continuity of care 
2. No proper hand over and follow up 
3. Not seen for more than 24hrs 
4. No bedside manners- greetings highlighted 
5. Patients who have died left in bed and not taken to morgue
6. Infrastructure issues- paint peeling and plugs not working
7. Doctors driving fancy cars and not caring about patients 

As we all know some of these issues are seen as trivial in the context of our economy and state of the current healthcare system but some are more serious which we shall reflect on. The purpose of this article is not to critique the feelings of patient X, but rather to reflect on how our healthcare system made him feel and furthermore to see how these feelings have impacted doctors who weren’t involved and yet have become targets of harsh words from the public.

Many of the “doctor only“ Facebook groups have been peppered with opinion pieces on how as a community need to out our egos aside and perform some deep introspection. Whether or not you as a reader agree with this is neither here nor there, what’s more important is that we can all improve of daily practice. 

One of the posts said “I believe we need to take a step back, reflect on our behaviour, and improve our bedside manners and how we treat each other. Too often, egos get in the way, and it's the patients who suffer”While this is true, there is always nuance to any situation and any situation can be very different in a different setting. 

Which brings me to the effects of what the public said about healthcare workers. In patient X video he stated that doctors just talk about their fancy cars while patients are dying. Furthermore, we (Doctors) should be ashamed of ourselves. This is problematic as it paints all doctors as callous, selfish individuals who only care about money? Yes, that statement was supposed to raise an eyebrow. Many doctors have unfortunately as a result become defeated as they feel their efforts have not been appreciated and many have turned to social media to post on their feelings. Some wrote,

“I wonder if you know that we have meetings where all the staff sit and talk about each death and how we can improve future care. I wonder if you know that we work overtime that we aren't paid for. I wonder if you understand that some doctors and nurses give some of their own money to buy supplies for their patients. Do you know how we fight for you? We fight with management for more resources almost daily. Some doctors fight so hard they get suspended. We miss Christmas with our families.

We miss our best friend's wedding. We get spat on, slapped, insulted, assaulted, threatened and disrespected daily. We get UTIs because we don't use the toilet often enough, we get ulcers from the stress, I know of too many doctors getting into car accidents after a long call and sadly being a doctor increases your risk for suicide more than any other career”

As a healthcare worker, I feel conflicted with what has transpired as in some ways I’m glad patient X showed the public how our system is failing in many ways and in another I feel that select public either has no insight into our system or truly has no appreciation of the hard work performed. I feel that was is clear is that we need to continue doing what we do, we need to improve what we can and we need to do it together. We cannot control the system at large but if we can make just that one patient feel less scared, more in control then hopefully as a collective we can do better.