IT IS true, those who do not learn from the experience of others are bound to learn it the hard, oftentimes painful, way.
Eleven years ago, a gay male was brought to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center with a perfume canister lodged in his anus. Even in a busy government hospital like the VSMMC, the case was a rare one but I’m sure everyone who attended to the patient had a fair idea on how it got there.
To trained professionals like the surgery resident physicians, retrieving the foreign object was obviously a simpler procedure compared to most of the cases that they encounter every day. Its novelty must have, however, aroused the curious and, perhaps, the baser human nature because soon, the operating room was filled with people including many who had no business being there.
Many of them videoed or took photos of the whole proceedings. One of these recordings would later be uploaded on YouTube, showing the doctors performing the operation amid wild cheering and giggling, and someone indiscriminately spraying perfume from the retrieved canister on the people present while the patient lay unconscious.
The video quickly became viral but while some found it amusing, others were scandalized. The doctors and other hospital employees were subsequently charged administratively and suspended.
Their case should have been enough to warn those in the health profession of the dire consequences in taking liberties with a patient’s right to privacy and a humane treatment. But three nurses of the Tuburan District Hospital ignored it and now must suffer punishment for taking a videotape of a patient, a shooting victim, and uploaded it on Youtube. Dismissal is harsh but it is nothing compared to the shame that accompanies it.
Six years ago, a deranged Canadian went on a shooting rampage inside a courthouse, killing a doctor that he feuded with and the latter’s lawyer. John Pope would later be shot in the legs by two policemen. He allegedly shot himself in the head before they could arrest him.
The bleeding but still alive Pope was brought to the emergency room of a nearby hospital where a team of doctors immediately attended to him. Some of them were in tears; the doctor that Pope killed, Rene Rafols, was a surgeon in the hospital and a very popular figure among the residents and interns.
While the doctors were attending to Pope, one of Rafols’ friends, a city councilor, arrived and angrily asked why they did not finish him off instead. One of them, still teary-eyed, calmly replied, “because, sir, it is our duty to save lives.”
That was a shining moment in the health care profession. Oh, that others were as conscious of their oath as health professionals.