Director: Family of elderly woman allegedly left unattended at Miri Hospital urged to come forward

MIRI (Jan 11): Family members of an elderly woman who was allegedly left unattended with dried vomit next to her pillow and bedsheet soaked with urine at the Miri Hospital recently have been urged to come forward to enable the hospital authorities to carry out a probe.

Its director Dr Jack Wong expressed regret over the alleged incident but pointed out that the hospital management was not able to conduct any investigation as the identity of the patient is unknown to them.

“So, we advise the complainant to either come or call our Public Relations Officer or lodge a complaint with Ministry of Health (MOH) Public Complaint Management System (SISPAA) so that we can investigate the incident,” he told The Borneo Post when contacted.

Dr Wong was responding to a complaint by a woman, Lynette Tan, who claimed that her aunt was left unattended after she was referred to the Miri Hospital for pneumonia and kidney injury last Friday.

Tan said that her aunt, who lives at a care home here, was brought by her caregiver to Miri Hospital’s Psychiatric Department for her scheduled appointment last Friday.

“During the appointment, the doctor who attended to her found out that her oxygen level was low and she was later diagnosed her with pneumonia and kidney injury. We were told by her caregiver that she would be admitted to Miri General Hospital.

“My aunt is unmarried and none of us lives nearby, so I flew in on Saturday to check on her and got to the hospital at 5.30pm.

“When I arrived at the hospital, I was shocked to see dried vomit next to her pillow and bedsheet soaked with urine that had overflowed from her saturated diaper,” she told The Borneo Post yesterday.

Tan said based on what she saw, she suspected that her aunt, who was unable to communicate properly, had been left unattended the whole day except for during tube feeding and the intravenous drip (IV drip).

She also claimed that when a nurse saw her at her aunt’s bed, the latter went to get fresh bedsheets and hospital gown, before asking her to help changing them and her aunt’s diaper.

“The nurse told me that they want to help the patients, but there are just not enough of them. A doctor whom I talked to also told me that there are times where the nurses have to take care more than 50 patients,” she added.

Tan said she was also shocked when the nurse told her that they had run out of milk formula for her aunt’s tube-feeding, and asked her to go and buy a can of the milk formula from an outside pharmacy.

“What if I had not come? Would my aunt have starved the whole weekend until Monday when the hospital pharmacy opened and they could get supplies? I was also asked to buy two measuring cups,” she added.

Tan said what was even worse was when she requested for drinking water, the nurse or attendant told her that they do not supply water and she had to buy a bottle from the hospital canteen.

After a thorough consideration, Tan said that she decided to discharge her aunt from the hospital on Sunday afternoon, even though it was against medical advice.

She said that during the discharge, she requested for an ambulance transfer from the hospital to the care home but she received another disappointing reply that was the hospital does not provide ambulance service.

Reflecting on the time she was at the hospital, Tan said that she could not really blame the nurses or doctors there, although she wished that they could have spared five minutes to tend to her aunt’s hygiene needs.

“They (nurses and doctors) worked non-stop, I did not see any slacking, chit-chatting or checking handphones. They were either monitoring vital signs and drips or administering medication, attending to a critically ill patient in the ward (who subsequently died) or they were updating patients’ files.

“Whenever I approached them with queries, they were polite and tried their best to answer. I believe they want to provide excellent care, but they are defeated by the system. A system that does not support them. I can imagine that in order to get through the day and to do their work, they have to steel their hearts and not let their emotions get the better of them,” she said.