Injustice in our medical system
I want to keep the person and entity they work for anonymous at the moment to avoid any legal/personal problems to them, but this story is horribly frustrating, specially if you’re dealing with chronic pain and how some doctors treat us.
The person we are talking about is REAL and got injured at work while lifting something heavy, which the person has done before, and here is what the “physician”( which the person in charge is a Physician Assistant (PA) and not an MD) where the patient is being treated at and people in that facility have done:
-The PA noticed the patient having SEVERE shoulder and chest pain, which she attributed to the patient having Pneumonia. The issue with this was that the patient was taken to the ER right after her injury by her company, her test weren’t consistent with pneumonia, and the PA disregard that and still left it in that paper work and did not provide with treatment or further blood test.
-The PA then said what the patient had was a shoulder injury that was acute, she did not provide more information and still left Pneumonia as a diagnosis. She did not want to provide with pain medication and sent patient to the ER.
-The PA sent a replacement doctor to work on the patient and the new doctor told her that her diagnosis of Pneumonia and acute injury in the shoulder was wrong, that the problem was a cervical injury, which once again she still left things as they were and ordered an MRI of the shoulder blade, and did not want to explore the possibility of a cervical injury.
-The patient went to her regular primary physician and asked for his opinion, he also agreed it was a cervical injury, which could happen after repetitive movement, he advice an MRI of the cervical area, which was not going to be approved and would be expensive.
-The patient got a shot, and was NOT informed of the purposed of it, the possible side effects, or what else to expect. The patient got a reaction to the shot, in which I got involved and went to talk on their behalf. I was upset at the fact that they were she COULD get a flare up due to the shot and they did not mention it, they sent the patient back to work. She retracted and said she did not ordered it and later gave her a window of a week of no work to recover from the flare up, this physician was nice compare to her usual one.
-The PA would get so mad at what happened and blamed the patient, then sent the patient to work and told her if the injury was not in the shoulder, like she wants it to be, she would not continue to see her.
-The PA told the patient not to return to her until MRI of her shoulder was done to get results.
-The PA noted that the patient asked for Tramadol, after being given some by another physician, and that the patient was rude and angry because they would not be given Tramadol, which was a lie. I was with the patient when the patient reported that Tramadol got her sick and not to be given anymore. So the PA lied..
-The receptionist laughed at patient.
-The PA canceled patient’s appointment without calling before hand.
-The PA mentioned how she was over-reacting about her pain and not to go see her face for nothing else.
-The PA called the person’s work manager to let them know that they could go back to work, without telling the patient, and telling the patient to not go to work until MRI results.
-Patient has MRI was was told they did the wrong one, luckily it was a cervical one that they did for mistake, the patient did show a cervical injury, but they twisted the story and said that the cervical injury was not related to the work injury and was not that much pain. A cervical injury could be caused by the movement she made at work, therefore what the doctor said was wrong, and patient went to a specialist to ask.
This is just the short version, for one I do not get how they label patients as liars, how they want them to “deal” with pain in useless physical therapies or tell patients to “forget” their pain.
I for one want to help this person and I am looking for all the options, but to me this is a legal matter now, but wanted to really help in letting them know that their pain matters, it isn’t fake, not just because you can’t see it from the outside.
