Pressing Charges
In healthcare, one of the most difficult things to deal with are the family members of patients. They are understandably angry, upset, grieving, devastated, and often feel helpless. Most of the time I try to understand this and not get too annoyed when family cause problems. But these parents were on another level. One of my patients was an 18-year-old woman who had a pelvic infection.
She got very sick and required a moderate stay in hospital. She was a dream patient—open, honest, and generally a lovely person. Her parents were…none of these things. Every day they would come in and start demanding this that or the other thing from the nurses on the wards. They wanted an extra bed in the room so the mother could stay overnight.
They were rude to the student nurse who was doing their daughter’s check-ups, to the point that the charge nurse moved the student nurse to a different set of patients to get her away from them. But when the doctors were around, they were the sweetest people you ever met, right up until we were out of sight or we said no to one of their “requests”.
They were disruptive, loud, and just generally obnoxious people. Thankfully, their daughter was aware of their behavior and had informed us that she didn’t want them to be told anything about her condition unless she approved it. She was an adult, so she was entitled to her privacy. This wasn’t a huge issue to begin with, as she shared most of the details with them.
But then her mother googled pelvic infections and discovered that *gasp* sometimes they can be caused by TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS *dramatic music intensifies.* As far as she was then concerned, we had screwed up and gotten the diagnosis wrong because there was no way there was any possibility that her angel had even thought of getting it on with a boy. They demanded to see their daughter’s medical records so they could prove that we were lying about the infection.
Politely telling them to screw off was the highlight of my week. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. They came in the next day with legal papers trying to demand we hand over the medical records. Turns out, they’d lied to the lawyer because the papers were for a minor still under the guardianship of the parents, not a grown woman.
They then threatened to sue each of us individually. This isn’t America, you can’t just sue doctors randomly. They then tried to get some crackpot alternative doctor in to check her hymen. Thankfully, the daughter screamed bloody murder when the guy tried to examine her, which resulted in me getting to watch security escort and trespass the lot of them off the premises.
I honestly hope she presses charges for that.