The Kenyatta National Hospital has been forced to apologize to a patient whose head was wrongly cut open by a doctor.
Local media reported that the Kenyan doctor has been suspended after performing the brain surgery on the wrong patient.
Daily Nation, reported that the incident occurred after two men had been sent to the hospital last weekend for different head treatment.
One of them needed a surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain “while the other only required nursing and medication to heal a trauma swelling in his head”.
According to local media, “a horror mix-up of tags”, led to the wrong man being sent into theatre and his skull opened. Doctors realized the mistake hours into the surgery “when they discovered there was no blood clot in the brain”.
Standard newspaper also reported that the hospital management consider this a “monumental blunder” and have since made every effort “to ensure the safety and well-being of the patient in question”.
Meanwhile colleagues of the doctor in question according to The Star, are unhappy with his suspension, saying that the nurses who prepared the patient for surgery were the ones at fault for wrongly labelling the two patients.
“As unit colleagues, we believe that while our friend may have exhibited some procedural shortcomings, the surgery was done on the wrong patient mainly because of wrong patient labelling by the ward staff,” the doctors were quoted as saying.
News 24 reported that the two patients are all in good condition.
Source: Africafeeds.com
