A Life for a Pair of Gloves

Monday, 30 October 2006
By Sabria S Jawhar
The Saudi Gazette

WHEN officials at the Ministry of Health announced their strategic plans to increase the percentage of Saudization in the health sector in general and nursing in particular, I was among those who were excited over the whole idea. Actually, I was carried away by the notion that we have finally come to a solution for the poor communication resulting from the language barrier between doctors and nurses on the one hand and patients on the other. At that time, I did not think that Saudization in the health sector might come at the expense of efficiency and quality. But since my mother was diagnosed as a renal patient eight months ago, I have become a regular visitor to several private and government hospitals both in Jeddah and Madinah. Since then, I have had the chance to closely watch the deficiencies in our health sector that might have led to most of the fatal medical errors that our hospitals were witnessing recently.
This is not to underestimate those professional Saudi doctors and nurses whom I am certainly proud of or to limit the medical errors to a particular nationality. Negligence has no face or nationality.
However, I noticed that some of the wrong practices were limited to Saudi female staff only. For instance, who can trust a nurse with long colored nails, a thing that I have never seen among other nationalities? Some of the Saudi nurses were wearing accessories that are good for anywhere but a hospital. The problem is that those nurses are exposing not only themselves to infections but also the patients. Who would also trust a nurse who is busy with bluetooth communications with her colleagues or answering her loudly singing (no ringing) mobile in an emergency room?
However, when the time came and we had to decide whether my mother should go through hemo- or peritoneal dialysis, a professional doctor warned me about the risk of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, a leading cause of acute and chronic liver disease in hemodialysis patients. He said that patients on maintenance hemodialysis are known to have an elevated risk of acquiring HCV infection.
Yet I ruled out that possibility when I was told that patients usually go through a reliable diagnosis of HCV infection before starting their first session of dialysis to prevent the spread of the disease through dialysis units. Doctors at the dialysis units also assured me that they use separate machines for those diagnosed as HCV positive and as HCV negative. Those facts prompted me to choose hemodialysis for my mother simply because with all of those precautionary measures one can hardly believe that the infection can spread among patients.
In my watchful presence, my mother’s sessions went very well, but last week I was shocked when a Saudi nurse was taking care of her. She was too careless even to change her blood-stained gloves. When I asked her to do so, she gave me a stare that was full of anger, and said they don’t have enough gloves!
But when I insisted she left arrogantly leaving my mother to the care of another nurse. The foreign nurse showed more professionalism, though she was not aware of the argument between me and her colleague. And certainly she used more than five pairs of gloves, changing them whenever she needed to touch the extensions that were connecting my mother to the dialysis machine.
The laziness and wrong practice as shown by the pevious nurse could have led to a disaster especially with the lack of supervision and on-the-job guidance. Since then, I have been wondering whether a human being’s life is equal to a pair of gloves? To me it was obvious that supervisors at that vital unit were so lax to allow their staff to carry mobiles and wear accessories exposing both sides to infections.
It was also clear that when a negative person is infected by HCV in a dialysis Unit, hospital authorities don’t hold an investigation, but just circulate notes. When the responsible authorities are so callous, what better service can the public expect from a careless and arrogant nurse? Incidents such as these should be the focus of attention and investigations by the Health Ministry officials. Nobody should play with peoples’ lives. It’s true that officials are well-ensconced themselves in luxurious offices but who knows where they will be tomorrow.