November 15, 2009 by admin
Filed under Top
News
Leave a
comment
Written by
our Correspondent
Kandang Kerbau
Children and Women Hospital (KKCWH) has gone on a PR overdrive to
limit the damage from the a medication mistake which could have
dire circumstances for the two patients who receive a massive
chemotherapy drug overdose.
Two patients – Ms
Yip Poh Hung and Mrs Ng L K, received chemotherapy drugs from an
infusion pump in just a few hours instead of a few days.
The mistake was
discovered by Mrs Ng who informed the hospital. Frantic calls made
to the only other cancer patient to have been fitted with an
infusion pump that day – Mrs Yip, who was recalled back to the
hospital at once.
Mrs Yip received a
potentially lethal dose of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) in just five hours
instead of over 5 days.
Mrs Ng was more
fortunate – though she was given the drug
in 3 hours, the drug she is on can actually be given in
just 15 minutes.
KKCWH called a press
conference the next day to explained what happened. There was full
disclosure of the case and there appeared to be no
cover-up.
The state media, for
its part, had been trying desperately hard to ameliorate the
severity of the error.
The Sunday Times
even wrote that two things worked in the “favor” of Mrs
Ng:
“But two things
worked in her favour – the mistake had been discovered just 10
minutes after she had received the dose, and an antidote to reverse
the wrong dosage was available, although it is still in the
experimental stage.”
According to a
senior medical oncologist Dr Soh Lay Tin, Mrs Ng is not out of the
danger yet and her condition needs to be monitored closely over the
next few weeks.
KK Women’s and
Children’s Hospital used two types of infusion pumps – one which is
calibrated in hours and the other in days.
The pharmacists who
programmed the women’s pumps that day got the calibration mixed up,
so instead of three and five days, they became three and five
hours.
It is not revealed
if the pharmacists are fresh graduates or if they are trained
adequately to handle the infusion pumps.
KKCWH claimed that
following the error, it immediately changed the way its
chemotherapy infusion pumps are used to prevent another similar
mistake from repeating itself.
Meanwhile, the two
pharmacists who were responsible for the error have been given
“light duties”. They are helping with investigations. It is not
known if they will be sacked from the hospital.
Medication errors
like this are not uncommon in Singapore’s public hospitals where
the junior doctors and nurses are often overworked and stretched to
their physical and mental limits.
Such cases are
usually not reported in the press and are resolved quietly
“internally” without much of a hooha.
House officers on
night calls can sometimes work 36 hours continuously without
sleep.
Singapore faces a
perennial shortage of doctors especially in the public sector where
low pay and long working hours have led to an exodus of senior
medical officers upon expiration of their mandatory 5-year bond
with the Singapore government if they are local
graduates.
To deal with the
manpower shortage, the Ministry of Health has turned to recruiting
foreign doctors from overseas especially from India and the
Phillipines.
Source: The Temasek
Review