Tuesday, August 14, 2018

foreigner with no relative....


It was a boring Sunday shift…everything was slow until I got a call from a hospital down south. It was a referral; the local ED down south wanted to refer a case of intracranial hemorrhage. A usual referral with an unusual patient…The patient was a foreigner. That means there would be a pain in the axx should he required any invasive procedure that require consent…. I did not hesitate to accept the referral as we are the nearest hospital with neurosurgeon oncall. I did however asked them to faxed over his passport page so that I could called up the relevant department for help.
5 minutes later I got the fax and noted that he was Canadian. His birth place was however Ipoh…
The patient arrived 1 hr later; he was intubated and the imaging revealed subarachnoid hemorrhage which suggest aneurysm rupture. Appropriate management was rendered and nothing more that I could do except to ask for a neurosurgical consult.
I called up the Canadian representative office up north and the call was redirected to foreign ministry office in Canada. I provided the officer on call with the relevant information and asked them to help me to contact his family so that further management plan could be discussed.
The owner of the R&B lodge had accompanied him to our ED. He was also a Caucasian who run the lodge with his girl friend(Taiwanese of coz). The patient was a lone traveler who had visited mainland for over two weeks before he landed and joined a PADI diver course down south. He had ridden an electric bike roving around the town after breakfast and later found lying along the roadside unconscious….
We had glanced through his belongings and found an I-phone. A good news and most probably we could get contact number from it. However we had failed to assess the phone as he did not set up finger print lock….So that was why I sought help from the Canadian representative office.
While waiting for consult I had decided to call the immigration office as the patient would need to filled up an entry card during his entry and it might contain useful contact no. I called up the head office and the on call officer had referred me to the Taipei Airport immigration. I got a returned call later and the officer had told me that they would refer the matter to their colleague in Vancouver for further help.
The next 3 hours was a busy one and I had successfully got a referral  to a medical center in K city. 
Prior to the referral, I got a call from the on duty officer of immigration agency. The officer told me that their agent in Vancouver had successfully contacted the local police and found the relative. The relative had gotten my contact number and would call me soon. 
I got the call minutes later and informed the family about grave condition. They told me that there would be a closed friend staying in K city that would managed the whole event for them. I called up the given number and told the friend about the condition and suggest him to act accordingly.
The patient was transferred out later...
I had however run a check over the net and found that Malaysia did not provide any similiar service for its national during such emergency-> you are on your own, the embassy will not be there for you....

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