karma.....

It was my third encounter with the so called principle minded obstetricians.

I had this 19 years old girl who presented to ED with massive per-vaginal bleeding. She was using a towel instead of a pad. Blood stain was noted from the pants…

I did a quick assessment – she was in early shock stage with stable BP but her heart rate was 110/min. A G1P0 at 9 weeks. She was not married and another young chap came in with her. She told me that the chap was not the father and the “real McCoy” was somewhere up north. As she was at this grey area of 19. I told her that I need to contact her parents.

In Taiwan, one is considered adult at the age of 20(civil law)  but would be responsible for his act(Criminal offense) at the age of 18 (as stated in the criminal law). So 19 is consider as minor and I need to do my job. She is aborigine and her guardian was the nanny. Nanny usually can't make any decision as most of them are not educated or japanese educated....I asked her if any other senior relatives was available and she gave me detail of her aunty.

While the nurse was busy proceeding with my resuscitation orders, I called up the aunty and she told me that she would come over to sort things out. As we don’t have any O+G specialist at the moment, I had to transfer her. I called up my ex-hospital and one of the senior nurse took the call. She asked me to call her back 5 mins later. A question mark popped up above my vertex but I complied. Minutes later, I called up again and she told me that their obstetrician rejected the case stating that it is against his religious. I thanked her but cursed as I called up another hospital nearby. I finally sent the girl out before her vital sign crushed beyond my resuscitation abilities.

  
3rd encounters of such kind and I questioned about ethic of these so called “religious orientated principle upheld obstetrician”…. I believe most of these obstetricians are devoted to Buddhism, but their practices of “no-do” of any D&C is really way against the ethic of a doctor. In a case of incomplete abortion, the embryo is deemed to be aborted and the D&C(for the incomplete abortion) in a sense is a life saving measure. By not doing such procedure, such devoted doctor was actually endangering the lady’s life…endangering other people life – so that one would not create any karma ?  a queer concept….but my future O+G colleague is one of this kinda of person(my 2nd encounter….), I am lucky as the nearest O+G facilities are 20km away…