http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/06/15/caught-on-video-er-doctor-mocking-patient-los-gatos/
LOS GATOS (KPIX 5) – A South Bay hospital has suspended an emergency room physician after she was recorded mocking and laughing at a patient.
Samuel Bardwell said he was rushed by ambulance to El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos after collapsing during basketball practice on Monday. He was not able to speak, was numb and in a lot of pain at the time.
Bardwell said he suffers from debilitating anxiety attacks and this was the worst one yet.
“It’s just heartbreaking because I’ve seen him go in and out of consciousness,” Donald Bardwell, Samuel’s father, told KPIX 5.
Cellphone video shows Dr. Beth Keegstra acting unprofessionally towards a patient in El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos on June 11, 2018. (Donald Bardwell)
Donald raced to his son’s side. But then, they said they waited for hours while the doctor joked and laughed with the nurses.
“Waiting and waiting and then the nurses would come in and say, ‘It’s going to be a few more minutes,’” the father recalled.
More than three hours after arriving, Dr. Beth Keegstra finally showed up at Samuel’s bedside, but with a security guard in tow.
“I was just like, ‘Why would there be security, when I have done nothing wrong?’” Samuel said.
That’s when Samuel asked his father to get his cellphone ready and record.
“I’m sorry, sir. You were the least sick of all the people who were here who are dying,” Keegstra was heard saying on the video. “You want us to wheel you to your house in a gurney?”
When Samuel said he could not inhale, the doctor responded by laughing. “He can’t inhale? Wow. He must be dead! Are you dead, sir?”
The video also shows the doctor yanking Samuel’s arm when he could not sit up. She was also recorded cussing several times.
KPIX 5 asked Samuel if he did anything to provoke the doctor. “No. I was completely calm the whole time,” he said.
A spokesperson for El Camino Hospital told KPIX 5 in a statement, “We are saddened and disappointed by the physician’s unprofessional interaction with the patient in the video. The physician is a contracted provider and has been removed from our ER schedule.”
“I think she needs to be terminated. On top of that, the hospital needs to be investigated,” Samuel said.
Samuel and his father believe the doctor thought they were just there to ask for narcotics. Tests eventually performed on Samuel showed he was dehydrated. He was given fluids, along with anti-anxiety and pain medications.
Filed under: General Problems
More hostile, degrading stigmatizing and yes apathetic behavior. Not saying this is the norm or standard but another unintended consequence of the lack of empathy war in our country. Anyone seems to think 1.) the chronically ill are targets and it seems we are all addicts. Therefore mistreatment is basically now assumed acceptable. 2) No matter how long this false opioid narrative is perpetuated- anyone can be targeted. Where is the shame that patients are just an inconvience?
Lissa; I’m not sure people like that are capable of feeling shame, especially if you’re talking about people who take pain medications & claim they do it for positive reasons…we’ve gotten to the point where heroin junkies are treated more compassionately than chronic pain patients. It’s as if they’re more noble because they admit to being addicts, whereas those lying, malingering, merely lazy “chronic pain patients” deny being addicts & claim the pain medicines are “necessary.” And when CPP suicide rates continue to climb from people refusing to claw through life with unrelenting, untreated pain, those same people will be just fine with it, because those so-called “pain people” weren’t worth keeping alive anyway.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Here is the YELP reviews for this hospital , one of many that tortured my poor CPP daughter and myself. Go read Yelp reviews for Good Samaritan in San Jose CA as well as Stanford INPATIENT and ER at their Palo Alto campus. It tells the truth about these monsters. All of them. https://www.yelp.ca/biz/el-camino-hospital-los-gatos-3?hrid=_tXgU9HymUjtpmo-Ffl3GQ
This doctor has taken the “care” out of health care. Good for Samuel. I’m glad he got the vindication that this situation called for. There are too many in health care out there like her these days. A large portion of them seem to work in my area and for some reason when someone comes along that really does have compassion, they don’t stick around long. Either that or they conform and become just like the others. I am being completely serious here. It’s just scary. And sad. I have to wonder how many people die because of the assumption of pill seeking. Granted, this case wasn’t life threatening, but some are. How hard is it to assess the patient while being firm about not giving narcotics unless it’s found to be necessary? You could opt for IV Tylenol or Toradol, you don’t have to outright deny ANY care if someone complains of pain. As a chronically ill patient with intractable pain, I can honestly say that I had never been treated so poorly in all of my life by providers until my health took a turn for the worse and I know so many others that have experienced the same. I find it absolutely and totally reprehensible that providers with compassion that are only trying to help chronic pain patients with controlling their pain get their licenses stripped, amongst the public humiliation that goes along with it. Yet, providers that have uncaring, uncompassionate attitudes that may actually lead to the deaths of patients that they refuse to treat under the assumption and protection of pill seeking rarely get anything more than a slap on the wrist, if not a pat on the back. I guess that is what happens when you get rewarded more for bad behavior than for good. I’m sorry if I sound bitter. Unfortunately, I am. Don’t get me wrong, I have respect for those in health care. At least until they prove themselves to be unworthy of that respect and then instead of being rude and disrespectful back, I just do not return to see them again. I have too much going on with me to put up with being treated like something someone stepped in on their way to work. I just want to be treated like a human being and I’m pretty sure that is all Samuel wanted as well, which is why I can relate. Good for you, Samuel. I’m happy that you got the treatment that you needed in the end and she got suspended for treating you that way.
I’ve had an ER refuse to treat my severe dehydration (5 solid days of vomiting from a really severe migraine). I begged for IV fluids & maybe anti-nausea meds, nothing else. They absolutely would not give either one. If I hadn’t been in blinding agony I might’ve had the presence of mind to say I was severely dehydrated from a week of food poisoning, thus taking the entire concept of “pain” out of the equation, but since I was wearing 2 pairs of sunglasses on an overcast day & they asked me why, I honestly said I had a savage migraine & couldn’t stand light. So their little brains hit on the idea of “pain” & they immediately went into “attack the junkie” mode, so any sort of care for anything was completely out of the question. Obviously I survived the dehydration on my own, but that didn’t seem a certainty at the time; if I had died of dehydration after I got my friend to take me back home, the ER docs would’ve been directly responsible. (for the record, it had been several years since I’d been to an ER for anything, so it’s not like I was a “frequent flyer” or anything of the sort.)
Apparently it’s ok for them to let us die if they think there’s any chance whatsoever we may be there for ‘unapproved’ reasons. may they all rot in hell, frankly.
Wow.
Just wow.
We all need more compassion
Context is decisive
That doctor needs s vacation,
And apparently got it.
But
As an ER doc myself,
Clearly she was not gonna win in this situation.
Either compassion or dispassion would help.
Aggression:
Not so good.
I would like to invite that doctor to Dr Pamela Wibles workshops
Sue her! I saw the video, it was awful!