RIYADH, 8 August 2006 — Relatives of a 22-year-old man who was injured in a bus accident in Riyadh have accused doctors and nurses at two Riyadh hospitals of being incompetent for sending him home and failing to realize that the man’s life was critically in danger due to glass embedded in his head and a broken hip.
The daily Al-Watan reported yesterday that the Saudi man was taken by the Saudi Red Crescent to a government hospital in Riyadh following an accident involving a bus on the Ahsa-Riyadh highway last Wednesday. At hospital the man was given first aid, x-rayed, given some medication and after 12-hours discharged.
The man’s brother said he was surprised that doctors had sent the man home even though he was in pain. Doctors insisted that he was fit to leave and there was no need to stay in hospital. Once discharged the brother took his injured sibling to a private hospital where he was given an injection and released after four hours.
On reaching home, the man continued to feel pain and as a last-ditch attempt his family took him to King Fahd Hospital in Hofuf where doctors and nurses quickly discovered that his hip was broken and that there was glass embedded in different part of his head. The man then underwent immediate surgery to extract the glass and treat the broken hip.
He is presently said to be in a stable condition. His family has promised to file a lawsuit against the two hospitals for being incompetent and putting the life of the injured man in danger.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry has ruled that a private Madinah hospital is responsible for the death of a mother of four, who died on Thursday after being given the wrong blood type after giving birth to a healthy baby girl by Caesarean section, Al-Watan reported yesterday.
Najat Balahmar, who had type-O blood, died shortly after receiving type-AB blood after giving birth at the Safa Al-Madinah hospital. Both the patient’s report and the bag that contained the blood were marked correctly; the mistake was made when a lab technician failed to check the label on the bag with the patient’s sheet before transfusing the blood.
The family of the deceased announced that they would sue the hospital. The technician, an Asian expatriate, has not returned to work since the fatal mistake. The report cited anonymous sources at the hospital saying that the technician was neither under the hospital’s sponsorship nor a certificate holder. If true, this isn’t likely to absolve the hospital of responsibility and may raise more incriminating questions, such as how a non-sponsored and uncertified lab technician could perform a potentially fatal procedure on a patient at a private hospital.
The family has vowed to seek resolution through the courts. Balahmer was a mother of four, including the child she gave birth before she died. The family also complained that it took four days for the hospital to provide a death certificate.
Dr. Entessar Taylouni, a member of the medical legal committee in the Makkah region, said complaints about medical malpractice were on the increase. He, however, said that this does not mean medical errors in Saudi hospitals are rising and many of the complaints are unfounded.
In a recent statement, Health Minister Dr. Hamad Al-Manie downplayed the number of medical errors in the country. He said the ministry had increased the number of legal medical committees from eight to 14 in order to look into mistakes and take appropriate deterrent action.
The Health Ministry is planning to establish a central databank on medical errors as part of its efforts to curb medical mistakes in both public and private hospitals.
