Hyderabad: Government doctors are upset that two surgical gastroenterologists are being blamed for the leftover forceps in the abdomen of Ms Maheshwari Chowdary 33, while it is a surgical team of doctors, nurses and paramedical staff who were together responsible for the goof-up. The patient underwent another operation at the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences for the removal of the forceps and is stable now.
Senior ENT surgeon Dr Manish Gupta at the ENT Government Hospital said, “Who is responsible for instrument and mop count? Who is supposed to inform that a device is missing? These are protocols which have to be followed by the surgical team. Blaming doctors will not help.”
In every surgery, there is a scrub nurse who has to take the count of the instruments which were given to the surgeon and the instruments the surgeon gives back. The protocol is that the scrub nurse has to say ‘yes’ for closing the site of the operation and only then will the surgeon proceed.
This is one of the routine procedures carried out in all operation theatres for surgeries and the co-ordination between surgeon and scrub nurse during the time of the operation is very important. Doctors are very angry as a police case has been filed in the forceps case and senior faculty of the hospital have not worked effectively to protect their own colleagues.
A senior doctor accepted that leaving behind the forceps was a mistake. “This can’t be denied,” he said. “Shifting the full blame on doctors is not going to help.”
He said continuous medical education programmes which are carried out from time-to-time are meant to refurbish protocols that the surgical team has to follow. “If and when there is a lapse it has to be rectified. Instead of blaming doctors they must focus on the gaps and the protocols that were ignored,” the doctor said.
The police case by the relatives has miffed doctors who state that the patient’s relatives were not handled properly at the hospital level. The trust deficit in doctor-patient relationship is a cause of concern and such incidents are further augmenting it.
