Editorial - Let isolated incidents go

A patient at one of the district hospitals in Cebu complained of pain during urination following a procedure involving the insertion of a catheter into his genitals. The media seized on the incident because the one who did the insertion was not a licensed medical practitioner.

The initial media report, in fact, described the person who did the insertion as a janitor. Not true, health authorities quickly said. They described the man as an institutional worker, meaning a person who works in a hospital and trained to do certain procedures.

If hospitals indeed hire people as institutional workers to do certain tasks, and inserting catheters into genitals is one of them, then there should be nothing anomalous in that  hospital worker doing what he did.

What about the resulting pain suffered by the patient? First of all, nowhere in all the media reports did it say the cause of the pain was the insertion procedure. No medical expert was ever consulted to make that assessment. Could the pain not have been due to something else?

On the other hand, if the resulting pain was indeed due to the insertion, then it has to be determined if the person who did the insertion has a history of causing similar pain to other patients. If not, then the incident should be regarded as an isolated one.

Not that the institutional worker should get off the hook. But it is unfair to throw the kitchen sink at him as a result of one isolated incident. Maybe he can be suspended. But it is a must that he be retrained.

Far worse cases have happened involving more knowledgeable people, including true medical practitioners duly licensed to perform intricate procedures. Some get reported, but a great many others do not. If there is anything at fault that they don’t, blame the system.

Human life, of course, is of the utmost concern and diligent care must be exercised by anyone entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining its health and overall integrity. We believe everyone understands this, whether patient, medical practitioner or caregiver.

That said, we do not believe anyone in his right mind would willfully and deliberately cause harm to anyone. Accidents happen, and they do not all involve negligence. Pain itself is a natural reaction of the body, even a body pampered with utmost care and protection.