Hong Kong government moves to reassure public as another series of medical blunders revealed in report
Alarming new cases include deaths of two pregnant women and incidents where medical instrument were left behind in patients’ bodies after surgeries
In the midst of public concerns over a spate of medical blunders, undersecretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-Chee has reassured Hong Kong people that the Hospital Authority already has a mechanism to follow up on the blunders and subsequently make improvements.
Chan offered the reassurance yesterday after the latest edition of the authority’s newsletter, the Risk Alert, revealed the day before a series of medical blunders in the last quarter of 2015.
“The Hospital Authority already has a regular mechanism to follow up on these cases and to bring about improvement measures. The main purpose (of the newsletter) is to remind all medical staff not to let those cases happen again,” Chen said.
The death of two pregnant women and three cases in which medical instrument were left behind in patients’ bodies after surgeries were among a series of new cases reported in the newsletter, which unveiled alarming medical incidents that happened at Hong Kong hospitals in the last quarter of 2015.
In the latest edition of Risk Alert, the authority revealed there were nine cases considered so serious they had to be brought to the attention of doctors and nurses.
Among the nine cases, three cases involved medical instrument being left in patients’ bodies after surgeries.
In one case, a piece of guide wire was left in a patient’s body and had to be retrieved afterward.
According to the author of the newsletter, “retention of guide wire may pose serious harm to a patient and require invasive procedures for retrieval”.
In another case, a 4 millimetre metallic object, believed to be a broken tip of a silicone tube metal introducer, was left near a patient’s eye during an endoscopic surgery. The newsletter did not say how the object was dealt with.
Meanwhile, in the last quarter 2015, there were two maternal deaths.
The newsletter gave no further details other than one suffered from “severe postpartum haemorrhage secondary to uterine atony” and the other suffered from “severe endometritis secondary to septic abortion”.
Separately, there were three cases in which patients took their own lives.
In one case, a patient was admitted for suspected recurrence of stomach cancer. Eight days after admission, the patient hung himself in a ward with a torn bed sheet over a bedside curtain rail.
In another case, a patient was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for depression. The patient was identified to have suicidal risk and the next day, the patient was found to have committed suicide by suffocation.
Author of the newsletter concluded: “The current observation mode for patient with high suicidal risk was not adequate and specific”.