A patient of SGH had a surgical procedure that didn’t exactly go as expected, with SGH coming out to apologise for their part in the mistake.
Celine Wu shared that she was supposed to have a catheter inserted into the right side of her stomach for her kidney failure treatment.
The decision to have it inserted on her right was made after extensive discussions with her surgeon, a Dr Tang from SGH prior to her surgery.
They took into account her sleeping position, her left handedness, the position of the dialysis machine and etc.
Wu woke the after her surgery and realised that the surgeon wasn’t Dr Tang, and the catheter was not inserted into her right stomach, but her left.
She said that the surgeoned who operated on her didn’t consult her about the location change of the catheter and she was administered with anaesthesia before she knew who her surgeon was.
She also added that she and her husband made several requests to see the surgeon who operated on her but their requests were left unattended until the day she was discharged.
They went back to SGH between December 2020 and February 2021 for Wu’s outpatient review but no one reached out to her about this mistake despite them making multiple attempts to find the surgeon who operated on her.
The wrong location of the catheter caused a lot of inconvenience to her life as she was wake up in the middle of the night from the pain because her husband and daughter (who sleeps beside her) would accidentally kick her tube.
There were also occasions wherer her husband and daughter were at risk of tripping from the tube.
Dr Tamg. the surgeon who was originally supposed to perform the surgery, offered to re-operate on her to move the tube, but the patient rejected his offer, saying:
“I am not just any meat that can be bought from the wet market and cut as and when the doctor like.”
SGH has since apologised for this fiasco and said that they are sorry for causing distress to Wu and her family.
Image source: Fund Raising for Celine Wu Facebook