Posted by
Devon
13 yrs ago
What's going on? Aren't doctors trained properly? Just read in SCMP that THREE SPECIALISTS examined a scan and still got it wrong and the patient died. Are doctors working in public hospitals not well trained? Do doctors in private hospitals fair better when it comes to diagnosing patients? It's pretty scary to think of something going wrong medically and having an incompetent doctor.
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As with all things in life, you get what you pay for. The fact that the public hospital here is run on a shoe string budget means like most things done on a shoe string - there is little to no redundancy and near misses which would have been picked up if there was some redundancy aren't and so become actual problems.
I don't know if you can believe verbatim what the SCMP says to be representative of the case. Really, 3 specialists read a CT scan of the brain routinely (in a public hospital run on a really skinny budget) - does this add up at all? Or is the truth really that 3 doctors (all of probably very junior level read the scans and if any of them were radiologists)
If you read the article carefully, the Tuen Mun administrator says that the scans should be read with a specialist RADIOLOGIST, which are the only people who should be reading X-Rays. The fact that he says this suggests that the scans were read by other doctors who may be specialists or specialists in training but who are not radiologists.
No point having a brain surgeon take a look at your haemorrhoids. It doesn't mean he is not a specialist just not trained to look at that area.
Food for thought.......
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Devon
13 yrs ago
EXACTLY! Just because a hospital is run on a shoestring doesn't mean unqualified staff (mis)read and (mis)treat a patient surely! I know it only SUGGESTS the scans were read by lesser qualified staff, but if that's what's happening, it's appalling.
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http://thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=12&art_id=117551&sid=34627975&con_type=1
Read this. The hospital admits that RADIOLOGISTS have not been reading the brain scans routinely. Now this will change so that RADIOLOGISTS will read all the brain scans of patients with head trauma. Not all brain scans - just the ones with head injuries mind you, and what about all the other X-Rays being done out there, who's reading them, the new grads? Interesting.......In Australia all X-Rays HAD to be read and reported by radiologists, here in Tuen Mun, the untrained can do so it appears......
As I suggested earlier, efficiency only gets you so far, once cost cutting gets to a critical point somethings gotta give.....
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you are all forgetting that the govt plan is to privatise medical treatment in HK and they have already advocated that everybody should be covered by medical insurance. several years ago, when the economy was looking shaky, they started working on this idea to cut govt costs. the govt and HA see medical tourism as a big earner. generally the specialists are concentrating on the private patients who are paying big bucks. the front line staff work hard to do their job but the top guys use the facilities to push private medicine.
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FIFIB
13 yrs ago
Well cases like this happen everywhere but yes agree you get what you pay.
3 years ago while I was playing with my 16mth old boy he twisted his leg (bad landing) and got really pale, sweating and crying a lot.
I took him immediately to Cannosa Hospital in Mid-levels. The GP said it was only that my boy was scared and had probably only sprained his ankle.
Two hours later I took him back since he kept crying and not eating the pediatrician ordered an x-ray so to ruled out any serious injury. Again he said my boy had nothing and send me back home.
That was Sat around 10:00 pm
My boy did not slept the whole night and kept sweating off the blankets.
Next day I Sunday I keep calling our family GP I told him the tight of my boy was swollen he said I had to go back to the hospital since probably it was a fracture no other reason to have a swollen tight.
When the staff saw me they asked me what I wanted again. Since it was Sunday and husband out of town and also had my 4 y/o daugther I had to keep going to the same place, at least to ask for the x-ray.
The nurse very upset said she was going to call an orthopedic I had to wait for another 30 min for him to arrive.
When the nurse showed him the x-ray he said my boy had a fracture!!!
They kept him at the hospital for 5 days because we needed to wait for the cast to me made and to keep my boy immobilized in bed.
When I complained why they sent me back home 2 times the doctor said that fractures in young kids are very rare and usually it was the case of domestic violence but in this case they would not call the police because it was obvious I love my Baby!!!
For the 5 days the bill came up 50K in private room and we never went back again there.
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When i was 9, I fractured a inner toe bone playing bullrush.
Was over month before I was x-rayed and put in a cast up to my knee.
My mum was a nurse!
Everyone can make mistakes.
But you also have to remember some mistakes can kill.
and due to the quantity put through some public services, it can become a bit of production line.
I recently had the chance to observe 6 hours in A&E on a gurney with a dislocated toe.
and suffered some form of communication error and sent to get x-rayed 3 times instead of just twice.
Was stopped at the xray door with a "wtf are you back" look from the attending.
I know its not a life threatening, but with the dozen of different staff that had seen me it feels like your rolling a dice sometimes.
although in general I was most happy with my stay and realignment.
I guess it comes down to you shouldn't believe everything that comes out of the month of a "qualified person"
and don't be afraid to seek a second opinion.
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selda
13 yrs ago
lots of junior doctors are making decisions without proper supervision. Once i ended up in a Chai Wan hospital for a D&C (dilation and curettage, basically the scraping of my uterus!) because two junior doctors at Ruttonjee A&E couldn't read an ultrasound and thought i had had a miscarriage despite my insistence that i wasn't even pregnant. They basically mistook a small fibroid (its size was1 cm, too small to cause any problem and no gyno would advice its removal) for a fetus. Luckily i managed to talk to a more senior doctor in the second hospital (where i was kept overnight!) and begged for a blood test to show them i had absolutely no pregnancy hormone in my blood and therefore i could not have been pregnant in the previous week. Finally they let me go home and i avoided an unnecessary and painful D&C. If i had been less assertive, and hadn't shouted at two nurses that NO, I DIDN'T GET PREGNANT and I AM OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT A MISCARRIAGE IS, they would have rushed me to the operating theater, put a needle in my arm and scraped the lining of my uterus for absolutely no reason.
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On the other side of the coin I was in for over 2 hours with my son in the POW discussing my sons health issues with a professor,total cost $100.Paid a fortune privately and got no-where.
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Hospital blunder should be hospital plunder! The health authority trains doctors and nurses who then get poached by private medical organisations with no training scheme, no overheads and no social contract, just accountants. The result is an understaffed service.
Pay them more you say? Well that would be easier without the huge overheads of training and mentoring that the private organisations don’t have to worry about.
Private hospitals should pay the health authority a “transfer fee” for every professional they steal from the public sector. Or the professionals should repay all or part of their training costs.
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Sorry Cowleyp what you have posted is completely incorrect. Firstly, nurses are trained at both public and private hospitals, here are just a few examples
http://www.hksh.com/en/nursingschool/index.html
http://www.hkbh.org.hk/eng/nursing_degree.php
And medical students and doctors in training get trained at both public (majority) as well as the private hospitals. Most recently I spoke to a surgeon in training who was completing a term at the Sanatorium hospital and I know for a FACT that the eye department there has trainees too. In the private rooms of doctors (if you are unlucky enough to be sick and have to attend many appointments) you will see many medical students being taught when the patients are agreeable to having them sit in.
In fact private hospitals want trainees as they are a cheaper source of labour but they have been limited by the regulatory bodies.
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I just want to comment that Public Hospital used to have one of the best health care systems in thr world..but alot of those specialist doctors have moved on with having their business by private clinics Thats why it take months for specialist check ups because they could be working for some private clinics and subsidised by government only. There is a rumor they use humans on actual operation as samples for future hkg doctors also or case study or we as human guinea pig
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a friend of mine had 2 days of tests on a heart problem and was told he needed a CT scan but because he worked for the government would have to wait 1-2 months, and that he might consider going private. he then asked to be discharged so that he could get one done at one of the private hospitals. the cardiologist's reply was 'but if you do it here you can have a 30% discount'.
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