If we go to the 6 Jun 2018 report on Coroner Les Mabbutt’s findings as to the death of the 27 year old, Malay Rana, after 2 days in the Westmead Government hospital, we find that the first sentence in his conclusion, paragraph 109, is, “Malay’s death occurred due to failures in his care and treatment at Westmead hospital.” As far as the Coroner is concerned, it’s as simple and clear cut as that – “Malay’s death occurred due to failures in his care and treatment at Westmead hospital.”
And what seems just as simple and clear cut is that this came about because at no stage during the 48 hours in which Malay was dying was there a clear diagnosis by anyone of his problems.
A sentence in the article on this is, “Registrars were confused about which team was responsible for his care, and they weren’t sure what to do without a clear diagnosis.” In other words there wasn’t one doctor in the whole hospital capable of providing a “clear diagnosis” as to what was wrong with one of their patients.
To lay people like ourselves, it would seem that priority number one in proper hospitals would be to have doctors available who were experts in determining what was wrong with patients, hopefully within a few hours of their arrival, with determining who should be assigned the task of helping them being the next priority.
But the most concerning aspect of all this is that perhaps nothing has changed in the nearly 3 years and 3 months since Malay’s death!!!!????
