The Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center Scandal

Primum non nocere

This morning, I saw the so- called Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center Scandal on YouTube and I was appalled by the way those medical professionals handled the situation wherein some doctors and nurses of the said hospital were seen laughing, videotaping and boisterous while performing an operation on an unidentified patient to remove a canister of body spray stuck inside his rectal vault.

Copies of the said video is now roaming the world wide web as well as in the form of multimedia messages being passed around on cell phones of every Juan and Juana de la Cruzes both in the Philippines and abroad which will further damage the already soiled reputation of the medical profession that is under fire and scrutiny after the exposé regarding the cheating perpetrated by some unscrupulous individuals in collusion with some Review Centers during the Nursing Board Examinations two years ago.

Based on my experience a case like this in the Philippines is quite unusual and you can expect that word will certainly travel fast in the four walls of the hospital, a patient’s privacy and confidentiality be damned (which is never practiced or observed anyway).

Also given the penchant of Filipinos for gossips and making other people’s business theirs, it’s not surprising that what could have been a hush- hush affair has turned into a circus that one could only imagine in a carnival freak show.

I have encountered several cases in similar situation in the United States wherein a patient will come in with abdominal pain or rectal pain and after a thorough physical and medical examination, we discovered to our horrors, foreign objects (e.g. toothbrush cases, soda cans and bottles, umbrella handles, etc.) stuck in places wherein they should not even be present.

In an ideal world, this could have been dealt with without any incident but in the real world even among doctors and nurses and other members of the medical profession who are supposedly and should be well- versed on patient‘s right to privacy and confidentiality, cases like the one that was seen in that Cebu hospital will always elicit curiosity, laughter and even ridicule for after all, humans are not perfect and we are prone to succumb to its frailties.

And yes, even in a country like the United States of America where you are expected to be always politically correct in everything, people in the medical field would react the same way like their brothers and sisters in the profession in any part of the world when confronted with the same scenario. The difference though is people here usually talk and make light of the situation privately and amongst themselves without resorting to histrionics and more importantly no jerk will take a video or a picture and worst, post it in YouTube for the entire world to see.

I’ve been in a similar situation in the past but I can say that all the people who were involved in the procedure as well as the staff who were curious enough to drop by and see for themselves the “unusual case” conducted themselves in a more appropriate and professional manner.

Obviously there was a failure in discipline and ethics here since the head of the team that operated on the patient allowed the unthinkable to happen under his watch. Add to the fact that this incident occurred in the presence of both medical and nursing students make it even worse!

And then we ask ourselves--

Did the members of the Medical- Surgical Team of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center violate the rights of the said patient?

Definitely.

Did the members of the Medical- Surgical Team renege on their duties and responsibilities as medical professionals?

Certainly.

Did the members of the medical- surgical team break their oath as medical practitioners?

Without a doubt.

Those involve should be held accountable for their actions and be meted the necessary sanction that merit the gravity of their indiscretion.

Lest we forget, aside from the Hippocratic Oath, members of the Medical profession should always bear in mind this fundamental tenet of Medicine---

First, Do No Harm (Primum non nocere).


Here's the video of the said scandal and watch it at your own risk. Let me just reiterate that the posting of this video here is not meant to cast aspersion on the character of the patient who will remain unidentified but done so for educational purposes only so that people in the medical profession will not commit the same mistake again.






Here's the latest news from ABS- CBN--
3 doctors, nurse face raps over YouTube 'rectum scandal'