JEDDAH, 25 December 2007 — Umm Mohammed did what any good mom would do when her son developed a possible health problem in the form of a swollen nose. She took her boy to a charity clinic in Jeddah’s East Nuzlah district.
What could have been an odd visit to the doctor turned into a major health scare for this 39-year-old mother — a health scare caused by a careless medical practitioner.
“I walked out of the clinic trembling, I barely was able to hail a cab,” she said. “I was crying, thinking how something so horrible happened to my little boy.”
Without running any tests, and after only a few minutes of a physical examination, the doctor declared that the swelling was due to a cancerous growth and gave the mother a prescription and sent her on her way. “I thought my son was going to die,” she said.
After Umm Mohammed told family members what had happened, they advised her to go to another clinic. There, a Pakistani doctor examined the boy more carefully. “He asked me to hold my son tight so that he doesn’t move,” she said. “The doctor slowly inserted a device into my son’s nose and pulled out a little pink ball.”
Indeed, it turned out that the boy had nothing more than an obstruction in his nasal passage that had gotten a minor infection, which caused the swelling. The doctor at the charity clinic had obviously given a very wrong diagnosis and declared cancer without even doing any tests. The doctor in question refused to answer questions when contacted by Arab News.
Dr. Ibrahim Saig said this type of carelessness wreak undue stress on families. “In my opinion what might be even worse than the wrong diagnosis was the way in which he gave the patient’s mother the bad news,” he said.
“Where are this doctor’s people skills? Clinical skills? A mother is the last relative of a patient that should be informed in such a harsh way, even if it really had been cancer. The patient’s mother could have been so traumatized that she might have even been hit by a car while crossing the street thinking about her son.”
A second doctor interviewed by Arab News said charity clinics often lack doctors with good clinical skills. He said that once he got an offer to work in a charity clinic as a medical consultant, but he refused.
“I refused the offer because I’m a medical specialist. That means I’m not yet qualified to be a medical consultant. In spite of that they offered me the post. Because it would cost them less than getting an actual medical consultant,” said the doctor, who preferred to remain anonymous.
The doctor suggested that the system might also play a role in the carelessness of doctors.
“Take this boy’s case, for example: If the mother files a complaint or asks for compensation at the health administration of her region she will get nothing. The doctor at the clinic won’t be punished because the boy is OK. The fact that the doctor had given such a misdiagnosis is not considered strong grounds for a malpractice complaint. If the boy had died, the mother — after months of investigation — might be compensated a measly amount.”
