Thomas Johnson - Medical Blog

TimesLive broke the story of three Tygerberg Hospital doctors, anaesthetics registrars Mathew de Swardt, Kim Morgan and Manie Domingo, who faced charges of theft at a disciplinary hearing for, with permission, taking two broken chairs from the hospital’s outside dump to repair and put them in the staff tea room (see here and here ).   As a result of presiding officer Shameem Modack-Robertson’s findings, De Swardt was fired and Morgan and Domingo respectively received a month's and two week’s unpaid leave. Domingo had already completed his training and left the hospital by the time of the sanction.   De Swardt and Morgan have appealed at the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and are being represented by Michael Bagraim, the DA’s shadow minister of employment and labour. After the story broke, the sanctions drew attention and an online petition with 16 000 signatures demanding their reinstatement.  The Western Cape Health Dep...

"What do you want? What is this? Who are you" the police colonel aggressively asked me. South Africans justifiably have a low opinion and expectations of the country's public service and employees  –  health, education, police, NPA ... They're mediocre, corrupt, incompetent and negligent. Public sector employees are very well paid , a third or more than their private sector peers for similar jobs having received above-inflation increases since 1994. The sector is overstaffed, around 2.7 million people, with many unqualified for their posts. Too many people earn too much but quality of service remains poor. That's not a perception either but proven by Auditor-General and Public Service Commission reports . In my posts about our experiences with Groote Schuur Hospital and Western Cape Health Department and our complaints to various agencies including South African Police Services (SAPS), National Prosecutions Authority (NPA) and Health Professions Council of...

The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) has doubled down to protect Groote Schuur Hospital doctors accused of the unauthorised removal of a patient's life support that resulted in death (euthanasia) and hospital and Western Cape Health Department administrators who covered it up.  As I related in a previous  post , on 31 May 2019 the HPCSA's Third Medical Committee of Preliminary Inquiry (committee) exonerated doctors Ahmed Al Sayari, Marcelle Crowther and Mikhail Botha and Trauma Centre head Prof. Andrew Nicol, CEO Bhavna Patel and WCHD head Dr Beth Engelbrecht.  I requested the committee's rationale and doctors' responses but despite promising to do so, they only sent the responses excluding Nicol's second statement (2019) which they refuse to.   The committee and CEO/registrar Dr Raymond Billa, who nominally investigates the public's complaints and assured me they're an "advocate for the public", cleared the doctors based ...

This is an update to my previous posts (most recent here ) of the Health Professions Council of South Africa's (HPCSA) investigation into Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH) and Western Cape Health Department (WCHD) doctors who removed my late mother's life supporting breathing tube on 7 July 2017 that resulted in her death by respiratory and heart failure. GSH's Trauma Centre doctors who removed the tube didn't inform us of her deteriorating condition nor sought our consent as is required by national health law. The hospital only called us after she died. My mother was critically ill and couldn't breathe without it. She had been intubated  that day, the doctors allegedly puncturing her lung in the process according to a nurse. The previous evening she had been awake and lucid. The following morning, the day she died, she was breathing on her own, and unconscious from pain medication. Later that evening she was still unconscious, with a breathing tube having been in...

This is an update on the Office of Health Standards Compliance’s investigation into Groote Schuur Hospital and Western Cape Health Department (see here ). On May 9 I wrote to Monnatau Tlholoe and Phumzile Phiri, director and assistant director of OHSC's complaints centre, asking for progress as I had heard nothing from their Stella Hartzenberg who had promised to report back.  I cited the HPCSA's lack of communication too. Phiri replied they "do not conduct investigation parallel with other regulatory bodies" and I must follow-up with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).  I replied the HPCSA only conducts disciplinary investigations of medical practitioners as individuals and not healthcare providers/institutions like hospitals and health departments, and the public has no recourse when parts of the system itself are at fault. I told her I shall not waste more time on them. Apparently, OHSC hadn't conducted a proper ...

The captured media, fiddling their way to social irrelevance I'm publishing ( here  and  here ) accounts of Groote Schuur Hospital and the Western Cape Health Department (WCHD) and especially my late mother's case (she was a patient) because local media won't. From November 2017 to January 2019 I sent CapeTalk, Sunday Times, Cape Argus, Die Burger and News24 and about three times each Daily Maverick, Groundup and Politicsweb information in article form. (Disclosure: until mid-2018 I was an occasional unpaid op-ed contributor to Politicsweb.) In December 2017 I posted a letter on Groundup  to an article about the general dysfunction of WCHD’s patient complaints system that its head Dr Beth Engelbrecht personally oversees. Inter alia, only she can refer complaints to the provincial Independent Health Complaints Committee which doesn't make it “independent”, a significant problem, and that at the time it had "logistical problems". (Also see here .) A rep...

This is a follow-up to my previous post ( here ) wherein I related my attempts to obtain treatment for a serious condition at Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH). I attended the hospital's outpatient clinic on April 25 on the appointed day after obtaining an earlier appointment due to its urgency  –  they originally gave me one for July 10.  At 7am I registered at main reception, and was the seventh patient at the clinic. The receptionist showed the practitioner my referral letter and X-rays, which they had seen the previous week, which indicated a serious condition. But due to the receptionist (a different one) previously not recording my appointment in their diary (the outpatient department has a dual booking system, a diary at clinics and computerised calendar at the outpatient appointments desk, neither talking to each other) when I made it the previous week and the practitioner allegedly been "fully booked", I was not seen and instead given an appointment for April 30....