Another Horror Epidural Tale

Sometime ago there was an incident, reported in the American media, where an epidural was involved, the victim turned out to be the husband of the patient who had the epidural. Now here is another unfortunate incident involving a labouring patient who had an epidural. In this case both the patient and her husbands became victims. Let the husband tell their story in full as found in the letter section of Malaysiakini ::

Local healthcare? Not for me...

I am a doctor in one of the hospitals. I have always wondered why patients are complaining about us doctors. I have been doing my best, and still they complain and complain. That is until my wife became a patient when she was about to deliver.

My wife recently gave birth via cesarean section after an unnecessary complication caused by an inexperienced and unsupervised doctor. This is our first baby and I was very concerned about my wife's well being as she was post-dated one week.

A miracle happened when her water broke and she was having very good contractions. As she was unable to tolerate the pain, we were offered an epidural to reduce the labour pain.

When the anesthetist came, he was very impolite. He never spoke or greeted me. I let him proceed with the epidural as I was confident that our doctors are well-trained. After waiting for 10 minutes, my wife’s room door remained closed. My suspicion grew as the anesthetist walked past me twice without even talking to me. I then went to check on my wife.

To my horror, my wife was on oxygen and barely conscious. Her systolic blood pressure was 44 when the epidural was given (this, my wife later told me after she had the operation). The anesthetist apparently was just standing there looking at his mobile - he did not call a red alert, he did not inform me my wife was in critical condition and my baby’s safety was compromised.

They later called an obstetrician and my wife went off for an emergency caesarean. My wife and baby survived the ordeal. After calming my nerves, l went to find out why would my wife with a healthy, low-risk pregnancy suddenly went into a complication.

The hospital immediately went into a defensive mode. The anaesthetist who did the procedure had only three months experience. This period is so brief that I would not be surprised if my wife was among his first few patients.

The hospital’s resident anesthetist who was supposed to be on standby was not available that day and later called me up without any apology or remorse to say that the doctor that day was good enough and that I was too stressed out. She said I should have let them take care of things.

Excuse me, had I not checked on my wife, that doctor would have waited until my wife went into coma. What wouldn’t I be stressed out? I placed my wife in the hands of the system which I am part of and look what happened.

I can really understand now why people complain about doctors and how they are treated by the latter. I received a phone call early in the morning the next day from the hospital’s administrator who told me there are people who would ‘get very angry’ if l lodged a formal complaint.

He said a little drop in blood pressure was to be expected and my wife was mistakenly thought to have a low blood pressure. I later spoke to another anesthetist who came all the way to check my wife and he noticed that the epidural was too high, too deep and there was an inadequate one-sided nerve block.

I immediately went mad. Is this how a loyal, seven-year in-service doctor gets treated? Is this the system l believed in? Is this what our director-general of health thinks we should be?

I am very frustrated and really thinking of quitting soon. The system does not care for its own, what more the public. Should I keep quiet because some people who want a promotion have threatened me about complaining?

I am now in depression and do not think l can ever use government health-care again especially for pregnancies. I really sympathise with those who have had the same problem. I do know now why patients complain.

I cannot do anything as I am being asked to keep quiet or people would get ‘upset’. I have nobody to turn to.

---Malaysiakini

As reported by the husband, it appears in this case the epidural, done by an inexperienced doctor, was not properly carried out. And a complication had resulted. Fortunately, at the end of the day, the patient and her baby came to little harm. But the treatment of the husband and the patient after the event was certainly uncalled for. The way the hospital authorities went into 'defensive mode' and the seemingly unacceptable explanations and subtle threats were certainly unwarranted. The patient and her doctor husband obviously had every cause to be very annoyed, frustrated, upset, depressed with the system. But all is not lost, if he wants to, he should take up the case with our new DG of Health and he may yet get satisfaction. According to media reports the DG is super-efficient and will not tolerate fools. He can definitely be expected not to expect his own MOH doctor to be so shabbily treated by the system.