Taiwan hospital nurse mistake results in death of newborn

jnifur SG

Neutral Neutral Neutral
Mistakes like that.....sign....news update at 10pm say a new born died. They are suppose to give hep B jab, but end up injecting muscle relaxen instead

saddddd Sad

Si|verGer SG

ya it sad tin 1 die then another few more babies r under the doct inspection. . . poor babies. . . so hard in mum stomach 10mths. . . come out like dat duhzzzzzzzzzzz Crying or Very sad

Travey SG

Latest news is that while all the hospital staff attention were spent trying to save those babies, a woman in labour went into coma and died. The saddest part of all is how avoidable this fracas can be.

Storm SG

This is the ultimate in incompetence… These “nurses” should go to jail…

Xiao Long Nu SG

ya i saw the news aso abit.. ah…then wat hapen to the nursE?gt go jail..tat hospital leh?wat they do?

nismoS132 SG

cést la vié...

and life goes on.

Si|verGer SG

omg. . . duhz lose another 2 life. . . tin nw nurses r not enough. . . Neutral

Travey SG

Not really. The baby was delivered by C - section first if that's even any consolation to the family.

Parka SG

Want to punish also don't know how. What's done cannot be undone.

CheekyCow SG

The people at that hospital must be MORONS. Do they have any sense or not.

Human lives are precious. I can't believe that just because of those staff at the hospital, lives are lost and many others put at stake. They don't have the right to be in the medical field.

Sigh. No words can express my anger over this. It's too sad

talk_cock SG

Sad case.....but remember that when pple enter this profession, they WANT to save lives. Nobody wanted it to happen.The reality is that workers in public hospitals face tremendous workload & staff shortages all over the world. Else, why do u think western countries want to "poach" nurses from ASEAN?
So while grieving over this incident, be thankful for our own healthcare system. Singapore itself, with its greying population, will also face increasing pressures on its healthcare sector. So if u have the calling, do join this profession. Me, talk_cock, salutes all doctors and nurses in this world.THANK YOU.

Parka SG

Yupz. They really work mightily hard. And there is really a great shortage for nurses and doctors everywhere in the world.

Parka SG

Something I digged up from my computer...bit long though.

OCT 28, 2002

3 hours' sleep in 34 - and that's on a good day

The charges have been made several times: The long hours that doctors work here could endanger their patients. But just how bad does it get? SHAHIDA ARIFF follows a junior doctor on a 34-hour shift to see how it affects his concentration and standard of patient care
IN THE 34 hours from when he started duty on Thursday morning, Dr Thomas Ho saw 45 patients, assisted in three surgeries, had five meals and got three hours' sleep.
All in all, it was a good on-call shift for the 29-year-old medical officer at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
After all, he said, things could have been worse - he could have missed his meals, gone without sleep completely and seen a lot more patients in much less time.
'Thank God such bad days don't happen often,' said the trainee with the department of orthopaedic surgery. He does one or two on-call duties a week - shifts where he is on standby at the hospital throughout the night.
Thursday's duty started at 7.30 am with Dr Ho checking on his 10 patients who were warded in different sections.
He spent about five minutes with each of them, discharged a couple, and was done by 8.45 am.
Thirty minutes later, he was downstairs at the clinic, and went on to see a dozen patients over three hours.
Most were seeking follow-up treatment, the kind of patients he would dread on busy days.
'If I have a long list of patients waiting to see me, and a patient is asking lots of questions about why he hasn't recovered, I get a bit frustrated,' he said.
'I want to finish with them quickly because I have a pile to go through.'
Such a scenario would reflect what was said in a report by an international panel of medical experts late last year.
The panel, led by Lord Ronald Oxburgh, honorary professor at the University of Cambridge, reported what had been said countless times - that there was a shortage of public doctors, and those in the system were being overworked.
One comment went: 'Medical officer (is) seeing up to 40 patients per clinic, with little time for

Parka SG

communication with the patient, little supervision and no time for reflection or learning.'
There are more than 5,000 doctors in Singapore, making up a ratio of about one doctor to every 720 people.
While Dr Ho admitted that he once saw more than 70 patients at the clinic in one day, he pointed out that he never handles the burden alone.
'There's always someone else whom I can call on to help me and clear my doubts,' he said.
He did that for a couple of clinic cases on Thursday.
After his 12th patient left, he closed shop and grabbed some lunch.
But he had barely finished his plate of chicken rice when he was paged - he was needed at the operating theatre.
At around 4 pm, his plan to get a drink of cold water was thwarted by his beeper, and he was kept busy attending to patients for nearly four more hours before getting some food.
After dinner, his pager beeped at regular intervals throughout the night, giving him a respite only after 2 am.
But he never saw more than three patients consecutively, which allowed him the luxury of chatting with them.
Had there been a bunch of patients waiting to be seen back-to-back, there would be no time for small talk.
The fact that he sometimes has to limit how much time he spends with his patients bothers him, he admitted.
'I hate it when we have no time to interact much with patients, because that's one reason why I love medicine; but that's just the way it is.'
At 3 am on Friday, he got his three hours of shut-eye.
The next nine hours though, were a whirlwind of activity. He saw again the 23 patients who had been admitted in the course of the night, went on his own ward rounds, assisted in two operations, and went on yet another round with his senior consultant.
By the time he was done at around 5 pm, he had completed 34 hours at the hospital.
But far from being tired, there was an unmistakable spring in his step.

Parka SG

When asked how he felt, he simply said: 'Relieved.'
He said the constant stream of activity, plus the sleep he got, ensured he was fully alert.
On those rare days when he does not get to sleep at all, he depends on caffeine, regular trips to the washroom to freshen up and catnaps in between patients to keep him going.
Dr Ho could have avoided working these gruelling hours if he had stayed on in Australia, where he did his housemanship after studying at Sydney University.
Then, he clocked eight hours at the hospital on regular days, and would not work beyond 15 hours when on call.
He heard much about the working hours in Singapore, which the panel described as 'industrially unacceptable in many countries and potentially unsafe'.
But he decided to return for the sake of his career.
'I wanted to get the best possible training, which I felt I could get here,' he said of his decision to come back last year.
'There's never been a time when I wanted to get out, because my calling is in surgery and it gives me a nice kick to do the stuff I'm doing.
'I don't feel like I'm missing out on life. I usually spend my time at home or catching up with friends over drinks.'
In fact, on Friday evening, he still had enough strength to party with his colleagues at a club, despite having worked an 80-hour week.
He said: 'After a while, working 30-plus straight hours isn't a big deal.
'It's like a rite of passage here, like you can't earn your doctor's badge without doing it or something.'

Copyright @ 2002 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

Parka SG

Working for such long shift while having only a moment of rest is worrying. Imagine you are the patient who is going to be operated by the dude, who may or may not have enough concentration.

nismoS132 SG

34 hours? 3 hours sleep?

thinks hard Confused

i took naps of between 5 mins to 2 hours inbetween projects, everyday, from after the september holidays all the way till october 18th. that entire 2 months is a blur, but i remember oct 16th-18th vividly.

oct 16th tuesday, go to school at 8am, show stuff to lecturer. go home at 10am. nap awhile, woke up around 12, start doing project. every 2-3 hours, lie down on floor sleep 1-5 minutes, wake up, do project. repeat like this non stop until oct 18th 10am.

spent 2 whole days trying to rush finish my animation project, merge the scenes together, create a new storyboard, create opening title and credits, then later add in soundtracks.

after that go school hand in some stuffs to lecturer, go printing shop print out the remainder of my projects, 5-6pm, hand in projects.

after that.... can't remember where i go..... dunno is go out wif fren or go home sleep..... but i remember september and october period is like a daze... i do do do until my right shoulder cramp up, slight carpal tunnel syndrome, my neck oso strained, all the way till recently, i would have pain if i tried looking upwards. nowadays still got abit, but not as fierce liao.

the life of a doctor. and that of a design student.
hai. i still need a massage. Neutral

Ah^ken SG

Ya lor should haf her sacked and jailed for negilence... Mad

hanniball SG

thats life... Negligence is in every human. punishment is necessary.

ppl do things without thinking, like the 150 year old tree being chopped down. sad. Crying or Very sad