On 22 June (Saturday), a concerned son named Cheong CT took to his Facebook to highlight the horrible experience that his elderly mother had to endure at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH).
It appears that a nurse at the hospital accidentally injected the woman with wrong medication which caused dehydration. As a result, the poor woman’s hand was badly swollen and bruised, and the doctor just apologised for the staff’s mistake.
“Nurse at Tan Tock Send hospital informed me that they injected the wrong fluid into my mum body accidentally; caused her to dehydrate. Doctor just apologize. Like this can meh?” asked Mr Cheong.
Following that, the family was also made to wait for the Lung Specialist doctor for almost two hours but she failed to show up as the doctor claimed that she was busy.
If that is not all, the elderly woman who was reportedly admitted at TTSH for high fever and increased heart rate had to endure another painful experience as she was poked five to six times by the nurse to draw blood, but all her attempts failed.
When the old patient questioned the nurse, she merely replied that “she is inexperienced and no very good at it”.
After going through such a bad experience, Mr Cheong requested for his mother to be discharged but was told by the doctor that his mom needs to stay an additional one or two days.
However, just a day after his first post, the son uploaded another angry post stating that his mother was not administered with any sort of medications to ease her swelling.
In fact, he said that “nothing is done as of 19.29pm” and he is really “pissed off (with) this kind of attitude”.
“May I ask: what my mum had done wrong to deserve this kind of treatment? Simple thing to do: can see swollen and just put medication, right?” he wrote.
Mr Cheong also said that the hospital had the audacity to ask him to remove his Facebook post, but they did not bother to provide any medication for his mother.
“Still can approach my mum to ask me to remove the post…I think these people got time to look at my fb post but no time to take care the patients,” he lamented.
Thankfully, by 8pm on Sunday (23 June), Mr Cheong finally updated that his mother received her medication.
Mr Cheong had removed both his posts after a few days, and when contacted, TOC was told that the matter has been resolved.
However, in the comment section of his first post, many netizens voiced their dissatisfaction over this incident and asked him to lodge a complaint and sue the hospital. They said that giving wrong medication is a huge mistake and the nurse should be reprimanded for the mistake and the Lung Specialist who was late for her appointment with them should have provided her estimation time of arrival if she is going to be late.
Other online users shared their personal bad experiences that they went through at different government hospitals, including TTSH. Some said that they know someone or were personally given wrong medication, while a few highlighted that they had lost their loved ones due to the mistake of hospital staffs.
A couple of online users said that the system is flawed as doctor and nurses are overworked, which results to their poor performance. The also noted that anyone can only get better with experience, including nurses. As such, they will need to train and practice procedures on more patients so they will one day become an ‘experienced’ nurse.
