Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Docs, nurses still fighting suspension order of DOH
ALMOST two months since the Department of Health (DOH) gave up jurisdiction on the complaint Genaro “Jan-jan” Jorolan filed against doctors and nurses at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC), the respondents are still fighting what they describe as an illegally-imposed suspension.
Lawyer Joselito Alo, representing respondent Carminia Sapio, said they have elevated the matter to the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and are now waiting for its resolution.
“We have raised it as a very urgent matter. Our clients have to be reinstated with full back wages,” Alo said in an interview yesterday.
The preventive suspension was imposed by DOH and included three people identified by VSMMC chief Gerardo Aquino as the ones probably responsible for taking a video of a procedure involving the non-invasive surgery done to remove a can from Jorolan’s rectum last January and uploading it to YouTube. com.
Alo said the suspension order lost validity when the DOH turned over jurisdiction over the incident to the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas, the agency now taking control over the investigation.
The anti-graft office, on the other hand, has not issued any suspension orders although its investigation is more in-depth and impleads nine people, including the three the DOH focused on.
Suspended by the DOH were Drs. Leo Arias, Joseph Montecillo and circulating nurse Carmenia Sapio.
The ombudsman’s final evaluation report included Arias, Montecillo and Sapio as well as Marlowe Parreno, the consultant of the Department of Surgery; Angelo Linawagan, the assistant surgeon; and Joseph Alfred de Leon, the one assigned in documenting the procedure.
Also included are Doctors Joanne Mae Merilles, the resident anesthesiologist; Serapio Salazar, the consultant of the Department of Anesthesiology; and Max Joseph Montecillo of the Department of Surgery.
The nurses, in turn, are Isabelita Remulta, the operating room nurse supervisor; operating room nurse supervisor Consuelo Tecling; the nurse on call, Ida Sumayang; and nursing attendant Rosemarie Villareal.
Two clinical instructors, a certain A. Oplado and Ramon Penley Pandaan, are impleaded in a parallel criminal case but are excluded from the formal administrative investigation.
In her answer to the DOH, Sapio said her involvement in the procedure was limited to preparing the packs and instruments, draper, sutures, cautery cord, suction tubing and operating sponges for use on the operating table.
She said she left the operating room to prepare another table and set of packs and instruments when Arias, Linawagan and Dr. Jason Sia decided on a double set-up, in case their planned non-invasive approach would fail.
Thus, she stressed, she wasn’t even there when the video-taking actually took place.
Moreover, Alo said, they’ve submitted the official VSMMC protocol on surgeries and nowhere is it found that the circulating nurse is in-charge of operating room traffic. (KNR)
