Malaysiakini letter: The day a public hospital took my mother away
posted in - Ethics, - Palmdoc |I read with interest this letter someone wrote to Malaysiakini. We do sympathise with the writer on the loss of his or her loved one, but there are some things the writer brought up which I feel need clarification from the medical point of view.
Every time we admitted her, the doctor would take some blood sample to check her condition. In total, so much blood was taken from her and not a drop was ‘returned’, so much so that her body became skeletal
Taking Blood samples are not going to make one “skeletal” and indeed will not make an adult anaemic.
The doctor didn’t see it fit to put her inside the ICU even though she was clearly dying.
ICU is for those who need intensive care , not necessarily for those who are dying. It is possible that the writer’s mother was terminally ill, and perhaps her doctor felt nursing her in a normal ward would be more appropriate.
As usual, again they took more blood from poor mom’s hand with much difficulty because mom had very little blood left to spare.
Difficulty with taking blood is not because one has “little blood to spare” but it is because veins may be tiny or difficult to access. This is a common misconception.
The rest of the letter reads of problems which I suspect are related to grief and acceptance on the part of the patient’s relatives. I have to say to a large extent these can be mitigated if the healthcare system can support this and it needs a lot of patience and staff who can provide such support, sympathy and empathy in times of grief. It is not easy in a busy public hospital I know, and that is one of the shortcomings of our system.
However I think it does not do the system justice to say the “public hospital took my mother away” especially if indeed she had died of a terminal illness.
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June 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
ONly one thing I would like to say – stop taking blood if the patient is for palliative only. Doctors need to learn when to stop doing things that is not necessary. This will free up the doctors and the nurses time to do things that make a difference. We should think and decide whether what we are doing is of any importance to the primary goal.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
I agree.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Than when you don’t take blood to guide you to make decision. The same letter will appear in Malaysiakini accusing doctor doing nothing and let her mother die.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:44 pm
It won’t happen if there is adequate counselling.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Unfortunately this is not easy to do in an overcrowded ward with extension beds where one consultant take care of 50 patients in a ward. Every patient demand your attention. Some patient’s relatives & friends especially those in ICU and on ventilator refuse to have the ventilator taken away despite brain death confirmed and at the same time other ill patients are in the queue to take the bed. After a while most doctors will just burn out.
Our system is just overloaded and we can’t statisfy everybody.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:25 pm
i believe this entry serves well as a good public education especially on the misconception in the medical field…
people who no longer understands will slowly be phased out… or expired… as information drives understandings through to the younger generations….
more people will realize keeping a suffering love ones on ventilator who are brain death is utterly pointless… and by releasing them, probably will be the best for themselves and for their love ones…
i believe counselling during moments of distress and grief will help but with a lesser effect.
instead, during average days, if we should seek to educate. through media. through politics. through blogs, we can change something, one at a time.
butterfly effect. change one thing. change everything.
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Did you see the part where the author talked about the “life saving drip”? It might just be a bag of saline.
It’s interesting to know how many people believe IV fluid as a magic treatment. When, who was that..Suharto, was terminally ill in the hospital, one newspaper had a headline “Suharto on life support” and there was a picture of him on IV fluid.