Friday I experienced something that took me so aback I found it VERY hard to sleep Friday night. An experience of medical negligence so callous I had trouble believing I had been witness to it.
So callous, that, while I report it today, I am yet willing to (temporarily) withhold some of the names of the guilty, especially the institution at which it took place, because I want to give many of the good people I know who are associated with this institution the time to clean their own house, rather than have such a black mark about them be published on the internet.
But since I cannot sleep, I decided I had to type out the story in an effort to purge my own ghosts of fear and disgust.
A friend of mine had been trying to get himself treated by this hospital in the Kansas City Metropolitan Region for several months, only to have himself summarily dismissed each time with an antibiotic prescription, instead of being admitted for IV antibiotic treatment for his infected leg, which only continues to get worse through each round of antibiotics.
When I entered this portion of his story on Friday, he had visited twice on Thursday, trying to get care, and been rebuffed (per his own words, an example of the way blacks receive worse care than Caucasians, something I dismissed as merely his own personal bias until I saw his treatment Friday), and was going back on Friday with me accompanying him as his advocate to the ER.
We got to a very pleasant and competent screening person at the check-in station, Allison, who among her other things, asked him a series of screening questions, including the question about drug allergies. When this question came up, my friend commented to me that he didn’t remember answering this many questions the day prior, and certainly not the one about drug allergies. Since this seemed an odd thing to me, I queried him to make sure this is what he really meant to say, and he verified to me that yes, he was quite certain the screening about allergies hadn’t come up the prior day.
After the entry screening we sat momentarily in the waiting room before being taken to an evaluation room where a doctor came in whose bedside manner could kindly be described as “hostile.”
She shot me, his advocate, down, and refused to speak to anyone but the patient. I had to feed my supportive questions to my friend to ask the doctor, who was obviously offended to have anyone question any of her pronouncements from the deity of medical doctorhood that she was (toxic feminism, perhaps, but it could have many other causes, even her own insecurities). She was one of those people who kept her name hidden on her badge, and when asked what her name was, and to please show her name, revealed it for the minimally required amount of time (Hayley Gorman — I feel no need to protect her), before intentionally hiding the name again, all the while denying that she was doing so.
She refused to do anything for my friend, because he had been seen the day before, and had yet to complete 10 days of antibiotics issued to him by script. When we mentioned that the drug allergy question had not been asked the day before, and asked about possible drug allergy problems, her only reply was that he needed to see a dermatologist as well before they would consider any further treatment.
Since my friend had been unable to get transport to the pharmacy for the second time (the first time his prescription had not yet been ready) until just before our visit to the ER, and the script had been transmitted electronically, so he had not known what he had been issued, we reviewed the two medications, to discover that one was in the penicillin series — to which he is allergic.
That he had been issued an allergic drug didn’t seem to phase the doctor, who vacated the room, and the person who had screened him the prior day entered the room. When I questioned this (Filipino woman, or so my friend described her — I am no good as such distinctions) ER employee she insisted that my friend was wrong, and that the drug allergy screening question HAD been asked by her the previous day.
This presented me with two options, neither of which was palatable:
- Either they hadn’t asked the proper screening questions, and so issued him a script that would be harmful to him, or
- They HAD asked the proper screening questions, and STILL issued him a script that would be harmful to him.
Yet when presented with both of these options, my friend was still told his only option was to leave, take 10 days worth of antibiotics that he was allergic to, and go see a dermatogist, before the ER there would do anything more for him, and possibly admit him for the IV antibiotics he said he needed.
At The Rainbow 