Guilty, not guilty? All eyes on VSMMC
The eyes of the world are on the
In one of the most anticipated investigation results in years, the government hospital is expected to publicly announce whether some of its doctors and nurses committed ethical violations in the course of a controversial surgical procedure done on a male patient last January.
The patient, a 39-year-old gay florist, had a night of kinky sex on the eve of the New Year and ended with a deodorant cannister lodged inside his rectum that required professional medical expertise to remove.
He had it done at VSMMC. That was in January.
A few days ago, a friend showed him a three-minute video footage on his cellphone that was downloaded from YouTube, the video-sharing network on the Internet.
The footage revealed it to be the procedure undertaken to remove the deodorant cannister from his rectum.
What disturbed the patient was how his operation ended up on YouTube.
Even more shocking to the patient, who was under sedation at the time, was how the medical personnel who performed the procedure on him conducted themselves.
The video footage showed doctors, nurses and other people who were not supposed to be in an operating room howling in mocking laughter as they made fun of the patient and his ordeal, all the while those with cellphones with video capability recording the entire episode without any sensitivity.
Severely offended, the patient went public and threatened to sue.
But the hospital said even before the patient surfaced, it already launched an in-house investigation the moment it found out about the incident.
It is the result of that investigation that Cebuanos, Filipinos, and many others around the world who saw the video on YouTube are expecting today.
Dr. Emmanuel Gines, media liaison officer of the hospital, said the committee tasked to investigate the incident is expected to come up with recommendations on what to do if it is determined that the medical staff involved indeed committed lapses.
He said the results of the probe will be submitted to the Department of Health for validation and proper action.
But the hospital official gave an inkling of what will happen when he said: “ After the result of investigation is revealed, their days will be numbered. ”
Gines, himself a surgeon, said that “ from a surgeon’s point of view, what the medical personeel did during the operation was really improper. “
He said the hospital itself could impose sanctions on those who may have erred but declined to say what the sanctions would be, saying only that the hospital management would be objective in imposing them.
Without naming names, he said those who were in the operating room during the incident in question were doctors and surgeons, an anesthesiologist, nurses, as well as medical and nursing interns.
He said the noise and banter in the operating room, as well as the peculiarity of the case, may have drawn the attention of civilians who managed to crowd into the room. The video footage clearly showed there were people inside who otherwise had no business being there.
The bizarre episode has drawn worldwide condemnation and has caused a horde of government agencies and organizations to jump on the issue, all promising their own investigations and possible sanctions. Among these groups are the Commission on Human Rights, the Philippine Medical Society, the Philippine Nurses Association, the Professional Regulation Commission, the Civil Service Commision, the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Integrated Bar of the
The Archdiocese of Cebu and the tourism committee of the Cebu Provincial Board have likewise condemned the incident.
Comments on the Internet have been scathing, raising fears that the incident will have serious repercussions on health professionals from the
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