Posted on 06/19/2018 2:12:37 AM PDT by servo1969
An emergency room doctor at a Northern California hospital has been suspended after she was caught on video allegedly ridiculing a patient after he collapsed from an apparent anxiety attack.
Samuel Bardwell, a 20-year-old student at West Valley College in Saratoga, made a trip to the El Camino Hospital Los Gatos after passing out during a basketball practice on June 11, The Mercury News reported.
Beth Keegstra, the ER doctor who attended to Bardwell — who reportedly was unable to speak and was numb at the time — seemingly didn't take the man's health claims seriously when she was caught on camera allegedly mocking him.
"Sir, you are the least sick of all the people who are here, who are dying," Keegstra is heard saying in a video recorded by Bardwell's father, Donald. "There, you picked your head up. Now don't try to tell me you can't move. C'mon, sit up."
The doctor, who Bardwell reportedly waited four hours to see, begins to loudly tell the 20-year-old to "sit up" and is seen trying to push him upwards on the hospital bed.
"She's literally yanking my arm," Bardwell says, repeatedly telling Keegstra he can't physically sit up.
"You want us to wheel you to your house in the gurney?" the doctor quips, before laughing at Bardwell as he says it's difficult for him to inhale.
"He can't inhale, wow! He must be dead! Are you dead, sir?" Keegstra says, later adding "this is ridiculous."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Note the story says he collapsed from an anxiety attack. The kid wasn’t taking his anxiety melds because? Because? Because he couldn’t get to the drug store!! His father is in the Ear with him taking pictures. The kid goes to Jr college. Those are facts in the article. I will add considering where he’s going to Jr college (at twenty years old) I’d guess he lives at home and is spoiled rotten
Good think Patton didn’t stop in on the patient.
Would have been executed on the spot AFTER the pep talk and motivational inspiration.
(I mean Patton executed etc etc)
On occasion a person needs a little ‘boost’ to get back on his/her feet.
Dr may have been crude but we didn’t used to think life was going to be ‘easy’.
Yeah and you don’t have to be a genius to recognize a spoiled brat who has been told yes all his lufe
Explain to me again how a twenty year old can’t manage to get to a drug store?
I think the real issue here is not how sick the patient is. it was the bedside manner and the lecturing in a rude way.
The patient may not have been deathly ill, but he was probably scared as to what was wrong with him.
If he was not that sick, you hurry him out and keep your yapper shut.
I suddenly developed severe pain in left side of my back and it kept getting worse over a period of two hours. Husband to me to ER. They kept insisting I had an entopic pregnancy. I told them I had my tubes tied. The pain was excruciating. They refused to give me anything for pain. Said people come in the ER with this common complaint looking for pain meds. Hours later they found I had a kidney stone. Admitted me and scheduled for surgery next day. I passed the stone morning of surgery.
Fat bitch obviously needs to wheel herself away from the table!!!
And Good Ole Dad couldn't pick them up for them?
The doctor's behavior is indefensible. But we really don't see the full extent of this patient's behavior, either.
Maybe he should START with the marihuana.
My MIL was hospitalized for something pretty minor, and was making a fuss. Big fuss. Nurse told her to shut up, people were actually in real pain/ dying. ( Go, Nurse!!)
That nurse got reamed when MIL complained. The nurse was not wrong, but perhaps should not have said this out loud.
Yes, that is what I was pointing out.
Just imagine if that doctor was wrong, a person was sent home and became worse.
Hospitals do have PR.
I thought Roger Ebert was dead.
Yes, but the fact remains that the differential diagnosis in that setting includes some serious life-threatening diagnoses, and it is crucial that you act professional in all settings when you are the physician. It just goes along with the job. Plus, it's very common for a patient to give conflicting stories, and leave out details. If you don't take everyone seriously, until proven otherwise, you will get burned at some point - and when docs get burned someone often dies.
I expect you took the medicine and didn’t record yourself in an ER looking stupid to the world.
A friend of my wife who has had a pretty significant weight problem all her life became a Doctor and she still has a pretty significant weight problem. She became an ER doctor. My wife points out that nobody really wants to go to a family doctor that looks unhealthy but in the ER nobody judges, they just want the pain to end or the bleeding to stop. Plus she’s not a people person and having a pleasant bedside manner in the ER is almost frowned upon it seems. So that’s why she chose that. I suppose this woman is exactly the same but meaner.
Collapsing from an anxiety attack may have happened, but until other things are considered and ruled out, it's a supposition. Plus, that was a diagnosis given to him by another physician. I NEVER trust the diagnosis of other physicians when I am confronted with a new patient. It's not that I don't respect them, but everyone makes mistakes and it's too easy to pass along a diagnosis that isn't correct. In this instance, what if he was having ‘panic attacks’ that happened to be secondary to a neuroendocrine secretory tumor that wasn't considered? What if he was having intermittent arrhythmias and was experiencing this as shortness of breath and lightheadedness that made him panicky?
You may have never heard of Dr. Gilbert Mudge, but he was a relatively famous cardiologist from Boston (Harvard Brigham and Women's Hospital). He wrote a textbook on EKGs that many, many medical students, residents, and fellows read as a part of their training. He's the doctor who told Reggie Lewis (a phenomenal basketball player with the Boston Celtics), that he could play basketball. This was after another hospital in Boston told him he shouldn't.
Lewis had passed out while playing a playoff game against the Charlotte Hornets. He was worked up initially at a different hospital in Boston, and found to have a hypertrophied (thickened) heart. Many high level athletes (e.g. competitive marathon runners) have thickened hearts because of the high work-load they endure. This is benign. However, people can also have pathological hypertrophy - which is associated with sudden death. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference. Now we have MRIs to help distinguish, but these were not readily available for the heart back then. The doctors at the first hospital weren't sure of the diagnosis, but erring on the side of safety they recommended he not play.
Lewis then sought a second opinion from Dr. Mudge. Mudge diagnosed him as having passed out from “neurocardiogenic syncope” (essentially fainting), and stated that he was confident Lewis could go back to playing professional basketball without limitations.
Not long thereafter Lewis dropped to the floor while shooting baskets at a college gym, and was pronounced dead at a hospital 2.5 hours later.
The point is that serious stuff happens, and every doc must take every patient seriously, even if their story sounds bogus. Prove it's bogus, but always err on the side of safety.
In my experience if you aren't in real danger in the ER, the doctors and nurses will essentially ignore you. My wife would occasionally get something that bothered her and she's prone to worry so her mind would start making it a possible death sentence. She'd start to think 'what if this is serious? I need to see a doctor now!' Of course it was always 2am when this happened. I'd cart her to the emergency room and we'd sit there for HOURS without seeing a doctor. I swear every time it happened when we finally left (with directions to come back if it happens again and they'll figure it out) the sun was up.
I have since told her that if she doesn't feel it's life threatening or she's in severe pain, wait until morning and call her real doctor. My rationale: the overnight ER doctors only focus is to keep people alive until the morning when the full staff is there. If you aren't dying you won't even see them for more than a minute. So she has to wait 'til morning to see a doctor anyway, at least she'll be comfortable at home rather than sitting on a gurney where nobody will talk to her. She actually agreed and guess what? She hasn't had these crazy night time attacks in years once she knew the ER was not an option.
Putting the “CARE” back into “Healthcare”.
Because of my anxiety I know about things like WPW, LQTS, Brugada Syndrome, CPVT, and any other pure electrophysiological heart condition. As you know a simple EKG is often not enough to diagnosis such conditions. A holter or event monitor is a low cost option that can offer peace of mind at the very least.
I did read the story. Would PTSD or anxiety have caused his physical symptoms?
Going off his meds could have but more likely the anxiety meds kept his blood pressure low, masking an underlying physical issue which showed when he went off them and exercised.
In either case he required medical attention and evaluation. Like “what medications are you prescribed? And “are you still taking them? IOW, initial screening questions.
Clearly, she’d be more appropriately employed managing a McDonald’s than an ER.
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