KKH staff claims seizure young child underwent was “essentially harmless”

A netizen, Colin Ng, has come forward in support of a doctor at KK Women and Children’s Hospital who was accused of not providing adequate medical attention to a young girl, resulting in the child becoming unconscious and unresponsive the very next morning.

Concerned parents Tricia Ang and Warren Lim had taken one of their four daughters to KKH. Since the hospital was busy, the family waited for 3-4 hours just to see the doctor who told them their child’s condition is not serious and asked them to wait for another 2-3 hours.

The doctor then allegedly told them that if they don’t want to wait, they can go to another hospital since their daughter’s condition is not serious.

The Lim family appear to have taken the doctor’s advice and returned home. However, at 11am on 14 Nov, their daughter fell unconscious and unresponsive.

The child’s mother excoriated the doctor and posted videos of a man, appearing to be her husband, trying to revive their child by performing CPR online. Ang indicated that her daughter recovered when paramedics arrived.

Interestingly, Ang’s post has since been removed from Facebook.

Meanwhile, Ng – who claims to be a KKH staff – has stepped forward on Facebook and asserted that the seizure the child went through looks scary but is “essentially harmless.”

He also urged fellow netizens to refrain from abusing healthcare staff without knowing the full details of the story.

Read his full post here:

A little explanation for context:

*This is my personal view and does not represent the organisation I work in.*

Recently a Facebook post has been garnering significant attention involving the place I work – it alleges that a child came to KK Hospital Children’s Emergency and was refused care. The post also names a doctor encountered during the visit in a manner of great hate and ill will. Following this, the child apparently went home and has appeared to have had a seizure.

This, something called a febrile seizure, is something that happens to young children, is VERY scary looking but is essentially harmless.

What appears to have then happened is that the child’s father called the emergency ambulance number, and likely told the emergency despatcher (wrongly) that the child had stopped breathing, and therefore was advised to start CPR, something which is unnecessary from the appearance of the child in the video from the post.

The details of what happened – did the parents yell at and abuse healthcare staff, would they have got preemptive seizure advice if they had just been willing to wait their turn, was the child already recovering during the video – I won’t guess at cos I wasn’t there – but that’s not what I wanted to talk about.

What followed in the public comments, however – was outright hateful screams for blood. Comments screaming for his licence to be suspended, that government hospitals don’t care, that you should avoid KK, that all doctors are bad. I mean, I get it – everyone is concerned for their child and all – but why? Why did everyone straight up accept the circumstances of what happened through the lens of the parents and then pronounce judgement on the only person involved who knew what was actually going on?

I’m in the department now, and it is one of the most pleasant, caring, astute, thorough, accomodating, and good-willed environments I have ever been in. The department works solely for the healthcare of children (is there any better reason to do anything really) and no other reason. No, not to earn money from patients or do experiments or whatever other BS reason.

So please. Target Zero Abuse. To healthcare workers, to any kind of service staff – to the sweet old lady who cleans the toilets, to the grizzled dude manning the petrol pump, to the young waitress part-timing to earn some pocket money, to the police officer ticketing you for parking – no one should be on the receiving end of verbal or physical abuse.

No one.

https://theindependent.sg.sg/young-child-falls-unconscious-day-after-busy-kkh-doctor-declares-theres-nothing-wrong-with-her/