Review of Hospitals after blunder
The city's medical chief has called for a committee to review management in public hospitals after the seventh medical blunder of the year at Tuen Mun Hospital came to light.
The death of a 69-year-old man after three specialists missed signs of internal bleeding in a brain scan has pushed the count of 'mishaps' in public hospitals this year to more than 100.
Secretary for Food and Health Dr York Chow Yat-ngok (pictured) said yesterday that he expected a review of clinical management at all public hospitals by a committee comprising Hospital Authority representatives and independent experts.
'Although there are more blunders at Tuen Mun Hospital, it doesn't mean other hospitals and clusters have no problem in their management,' he said.
'I have requested the Hospital Authority to set up a committee to look into the problems.'
The authority said it would set up the committee as soon as possible and come up with a timetable and scope of the review.
In the latest medical mistake, revealed by the authority on Tuesday, a jogger who hit his head when he collapsed from a heart attack was prescribed blood thinner. The medicine exacerbated bleeding in his brain, a condition the doctors overlooked in the first brain scan but which was noticed in a subsequent one.
Chow said the first scan may have been unclear and the doctors might have focused on the patient's heart disease when he was admitted to hospital.
'It's not only about looking at the scan when medical staff treat a patient. He suffered heart disease, which can be fatal too.'
He said that Dr Mok Chun-keung, the hospital's chief of medicine and geriatrics, had explained the incident to the public 'honestly' on Tuesday, and that it had no direct relation to a manpower shortage at the hospital.
All recent incidents in Tuen Mun hospitals happened in different departments and each case was separate, he said. 'The most important thing for medical staff is to try their best to help patients.'
An investigation panel on the case has been set up and is due to hand in a report in eight weeks.
Other serious mistakes last month included the death of a man at Kowloon Hospital after medical staff secured all four sides of a piece of gauze over an opening in his trachea, instead of securing it on just one side, and a broken leg in a newborn baby at Prince of Wales Hospital.
In October, a premature baby at Tuen Mun Hospital had to have his right leg amputated after an artery was damaged while a catheter was being inserted.
Medical staff at the same hospital mistakenly inserted a tube in an elderly man's bile duct, when they were supposed to treat him for fluid in the space around the lungs.
The Legislative Council last night passed a non-binding motion tabled by lawmaker Andrew Cheng Kar-foo on establishing an independent statutory Office of the Health Service Ombudsman to take complaints.
