2 Bihar Doctors, penalized for remove gallbladder instead of operating leg

2 Bihar Doctors, penalized for remove gallbladder instead of operating leg

Sushila Devi, spouse of Shiv Narayan Prasad of Bahbal Bazar village in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district was to be operated for a burn injury in her leg at the SKMCH on September 10, 2011, but the doctors ended up removing her gall bladder.

Two government doctors in Bihar have been punished for rescuing a patient’s gall bladder instead of performing a surgery on her leg, eight years after the incident.
both the doctors question the government order–issued on Friday– in court.
While one of the two doctors has since old, the other is serving in the Bihar health services.

The government has reduced 10 per cent pension of Dr Nand Kishore Mishra, the then assistant professor of surgery at the Sri Krishna Medical College Hospital (SKMCH), Muzaffarpur and stopped three annual increments of Dr Krishna Kumar, the then senior resident of the department of anesthesiology at the hospital, with retrospective effect, said principal secretary, health Sanjay Kumar.

The crime took place on September 10, 2011, where Sushila Devi, spouse of Shiv Narayan Prasad of Bahbal Bazar village in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district was to be operated for a burn injury in her leg at the SKMCH, but the doctor ended up removing her gall bladder.

Dr Mishra still not confessed his crime, and said he neither treated Sushila Devi nor operated upon her and was penalised simply because the doctor who performed the surgery was in his unit. He called it a case of mistaken identity due to confusion created by the patient herself, and failure on part of the operation theatre staff and nurse to detect it.

He tells us different kind of story, “Dr HN Bharadwaj, the-then associate professor and also the head for SKMCH’s department of surgery .we both were doing surgery in parallel operation theatre, where the nurse called the name Kiran Devi, this woman, identified as Sushila Devi, presented herself in front of the OT nurse. When the nurse asked the patient if she was Kiran Devi, she waved her head in affirmative,” he said.

The anaesthetist claimed the patient nodded in affirmative when he asked her if she was Kiran Devi, who was originally scheduled to be operated for gall bladder stone. I was all this while operating upon another patient with common bile duct problem while another doctor operated upon Sushila Devi’s gall bladder believing her to be Kiran Devi.why the patient had agreed to be identified by a different name, Dr Mishra said. Since the doctor who did the surgery belonged to my unit, I was held guilty for a surgery I never did.

Dr Mishra retired from government service last year and stated he has since not got any pension.

Dr Krishna Kumar, now an associate professor and head, department of anaesthesiology, SKMCH, too, felt he was not at fault.

Dr Krishna Kumar said, my job was only to sedate the patient and ensure there was no complication arising out of anaesthesia. I did my job with sincerity and the patient recovered out of anaesthesia and is fit as a fiddle.
Two surgeons should have checked what surgery was to be performed. A senior resident of the surgery department, who brought Sushila Devi to me, but with papers of Kiran Devi requested me to sedate her for surgery of the gall bladder. Two surgeons should have checked what surgery was to be performed. I am not at fault and will challenge the government order in court,” said Dr Kumar.

Kamla Kumari, the nurse, who called out the patient and brought her to the doctor, has already been punished with stoppage of her four annual increments. She blamed the patient Sushila Devi for the case of mistaken identity.