Doctors plan not to treat abusive patients


Guyana Chronicle
November 9, 1999


DOCTORS at the Georgetown Hospital, tired of abusive patients and relatives, plan not to treat sick persons who threaten them at the Accident and Emergency Unit.

"Patients have always been abusive, but for last week it has become overbearing," a doctor told the Chronicle Sunday, adding "every day patients abuse doctors and nurses."

According to him, he was verbally abused by a patient of East Ruimveldt, Georgetown, who was seeking treatment for chops to his head and hand, two Mondays ago.

The doctor said that after he told the man he had to be admitted, the patient became upset and walked out of the hospital when porters were ordered to take him to the ward.

"We will not be engaging in any exchange of bad words with any patient...I will never do that...(instead) we are not going to attend to anyone who is disrespectful," he maintained.

The doctor said he had examined the patient and stitched and wrapped his wounds.

He said he was not harsh with the patient who had sustained serious wounds and required admission to the institution.

When he asked the porters to take the patient to the ward, the man got off the bed in the treatment room, verbally abused them and walked out the hospital, the doctor said.

A week before this, the same doctor reported that he was verbally abused by the mother of a school girl he had examined.

He said he was telling the child's mother what he had discovered after examining her daughter, but she started abusing him even before he could have finished.

He refused to see the woman's child again, because of her behaviour. It was later explained to the doctor that the woman was a single parent and was stressed-out.

But, he said being stressed out was no excuse for abusing hospital staff and he was still not seeing the patient.

"No staff is prepared to support the abuse of doctors and nurses" by anyone who is seeking medical attention at the hospital, he said.

"The hospital is an institution as any other institution, and when people come here they have to behave like they do at other institutions", he argued.

The doctor pointed out that even some hospital workers were abusive to doctors and nurses there when their relatives and friends were not being attended to immediately, or admitted.

The foreign doctor explained that he had experienced patients behaving disorderly towards him from the start of his work in Guyana.

He said at first it was overbearing, but he later realised that if he worried too much about that, his patients might cause his death.

Nurses at the Accident and Emergency (ER) Unit say some patients abuse them when they seek admission, when they are not the ones who carry out orders pertaining to admission of a patient.

A nurse explained that when patients who are not seriously ill or injured occupy the emergency room, there is no space to accommodate real emergency cases.

It becomes confusing since some patients have to be removed from beds so that others can be accommodated, she said.

But patients who are barely sick, become abusive when told they do not have to be admitted to the institution.

They do not realise that there are those who are seriously injured or ill, and whose lives can be lost in a short while if they do not have proper medical attention, the nurse explained.

A nurse was reportedly abused by a Policeman earlier this year, after she told him no doctor was on duty to see the patient he had escorted to the Accident and Emergency Unit.

The Policeman had reportedly spoken in a harsh manner to the nurse while he was holding his gun, in the presence of other hospital staff, and patients, at the unit. (SHAUNA JEMMOT)


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