Grief

One of my most respected Consultant, had to come back from his emergency leave. Eventhough within days of grieving after the passing away of one of his closest family member, he came back to chair the department as the temporary Head of Department as several Chinese dailies had jumped on the bandwagon of front headlining the grief of a mother who had lost a pair of twin through miscarriage.

A daily went far and wide by putting up the five big chinese letter in red, which loosely translated as 'Causing Death of the Dragon Phoenix Conception (Twin of boy and girl)'.

The enquiry began today, with my Consultant having one heart attack after another when he found out that the news went as far as brief 10minutes in Astro News section and some discussions over My Fm.

To be honest, I am part of the team who treated this unfortunate lady.
To be honest, as well, I can't reveal the whole nature of her complaint and the source of her complaint.

But the conclusion from this enquiry can be summarized into few words.
Mismatched expectations. Poor communications. Weak understanding of medical urgency.
And lastly, helpful over-enthusiastic politician.

Through this, everyone seems to gain something. the good, the bad and the ugly.

The patient and family.
Her grudge put through. She can go through her grief phase more comfortably. It is bad to bottle up problems.

The press.
Sales. Sales. Hot hot sales. Translate into good rating, and good money. Press freedom at its ugliest form.

The medical team.
Will be able to pinpoint the shortfalls and to improve the whole management, provided the ministry is able to give us enough fundings to make the whole hospy and the staffs treat every customer like a queen with a chest of gold. We also have a lot of superpowers as well, just to make some bloodtaking a practice of the afteryears.

Consultants, specialists and medical officers had to sacrifice their time from treating and seeing patients in wards and clinics to attend this emergency inquiry. Some patients had to given another appointment another time. Well, those are just other members of the public that the YB failed to champion.

Not just the management of this patient, the whole circumstances in which events took place should be investigated. Due to the severe lacking of staffs, especially the medical officers, other emergencies surely had to be prioritized.

The ministry should also look at the paper presented by the ignorant admin, listing the whole range of empty slots in the medical officers range which was conveniently filled up by the house officers, who were mostly a baby-sitting burden.

Just today, one of the house officers, who already completed a surgical-based posting, actually trying to burr a hole into the clitoris, when trying to insert a Foley's into the urethra before the C-section. And trust me, he was trying very hard.

The politician.
Can be seen doing something. Have himself look like the hero of the people.
But in actual fact, he is the champion of ONE people, not the people.

Instead of running to the press, to headline himself, he should instead channel the problem to the proper authority, ie MMC Malaysia Medical Council or knock on the door of the State Health Directory, who will surely succumb to his political pressure to investigate further.

I'm sure investigation and inquiry will be done impartially even without the public pressure and every doubts of the unfortunate lady will be cleared just the same.

Going to the press with an one-sided story is simply an unacceptable move.

Frankly, from how he handles this piece of grief clearly shown his immaturity to serve and surely he has much more to cover in order to gain the respect from the medical fraternity.

Please don't treat the medical fraternity like other members of the public servants. We are impartial and we treat everyone just the same, no matter you're from Balisan or PR, from our Bolehland or from outside. Just reminded me of the time when I had a fine cocktail of Vietnamese, Thai and Burmese delivering in our labor room, going home happily with the wide smile.

Lastly, there are few questions I collected from the net, which I have my own personal answer to it.

On his own ability as a young candidate, Koay said: “Dr Teng says I am young and I can wait (to become a state assemblyman). Yes, I can wait but can the people?”

The people should have waited.

Koay admitted that the campaigning was “tough going at the moment due to the small number of volunteers though we hope to recruit more soon”.

Recruit some maturity, as well.

At this moment, it's all grief, grief, grief and grief.

Perhaps he can help us all out, since his Constituency does cover the hospy ground.

At least, be man enough to apologize.

Earn our respect. Be the real Berhormat.

At the end of the day, the people (not ONE people) voted you in.

There are many ways to handle a grief.
The good way, the bad way and the ugly way.
Learn to differentiate them, please.

P.S. Calling us the killers of baby in the case of miscarriage is simply just too heartbreaking, even for the public.