A VIDEO CLIP shared on Thai social media by a woman whose mother was gravely ill showing an emergency room doctor at Chiang Dao Hospital, in Chiang Mai province, refusing to treat her and telling them to go home has gone viral and attracted a lot of criticism, Amarin TV said.
The five-minute-long clip was posted on Facebook by Ms. Chantra Saengchan, 29, who had taken her mother, Ms. Alema Saengchan, 59, to this hospital at 1 a.m. on Oct. 31 as she was suffering from diarrhea and feeling cold since the evening and had not improved.
However, the emergency room doctor came out and asked her whether her mother could sit and walk. When he got an affirmative reply, he told her to take her home.
An argument broke out when Chantra asked the doctor whether he is not going to check her condition at all, and the doctor angrily pointed out that emergency patients are those who are breathing fast, about to die or about to give birth.
A nurse then stepped in to mediate and took her mother’s blood pressure with the doctor taking her pulse and then walking away. The nurse then told them to give her paracetamol and go home.
The next morning she took her mother to a clinic doctor in the same district and he said she was suffering from an inflammatory bowel condition and gave her medicine and she is now feeling better.
After the video clip started circulating a lot of people started commenting on this incident and questioned whether the doctor’s action was ethical or not. Many pointed out that this hospital is in one of Chiang Mai province’s outer districts.
Reporters contacted the hospital but the operator said the person responsible is running errands and to leave their phone number for him to call back.
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The doctor who turned away a patient in the dead of the night. Thai headline “Patient chucked out, told to go home.” Photo: Amarin TV
