Misdiagnoses, Mistreatment

I’m writing again about the problems of the Ministry of Health, illustrating them this time with two incidents I recently came across, and which showcase the serious level that misdiagnoses has reached in public medical facilities.

The first incident concerns an Arab man living in Kuwait whose life turned into a living hell after his uvula was mistakenly removed instead of his tonsils during two routine operations carried out at the Zain and Al-Sabah hospitals.

The error happened in October 2010, resulting in the patient suffering serious complications including chronic dry throat and a persistent sensation of nausea. The man has eventually pressed charges against the Ministry of Health and the expatriate doctor who carried out the operation, after his miserable situation reached a point in which he seriously thought of ending his marriage to spare his wife and three children the pain of watching him suffer every day.

The second case concerns a Kuwaiti fashion designer who fell victim to both misdiagnosis and mistreatment at Adan Hospital where she was receiving treatment for years for hemolytic anemia, lupus and other diseases. The patient initially filed a complaint with Adan Hospital’s management against her doctor for mistreatment. When she arrived at the hospital the next day to take her regular injection, the doctor behaved angrily, having apparently learnt about the complaint against him. So he gave her the shot violently and stormed out of the room even before the injection was completed, while she cringed in pain. A nurse was then left to finish the job and stop the bleeding caused by the doctor’s behaviour.

After that fiasco, the patient decided to go to Mubarak Hospital where she was diagnosed with a blood clot in her foot. Medical staff at the Adan Hospital reportedly never gave her an explanation for the swelling in her foot, which she later discovered was caused by the clot.

That’s not all, as the patient explains that doctors at the Mubarak Hospital assigned a psychiatrist to evaluate her under the pretext that she was treating nurses aggressively. The evaluation report, however, showed that she did not suffer any psychiatric problem, but keeps yelling due to extreme pain.

When is the Ministry of Health going to put an end to misdiagnoses, mistreatment and other problems that continue to take place every day in public medical facilities?

By Abdullah Buair

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