Another patient accuses Changi General Hospital of inadequate care

Another patient is accusing Changi General Hospital’s (CGH) emergency department of extending poor care to him.

This latest patient’s story comes two days after Singapore’s apex court ruled that CGH was guilty of negligence in a case where delayed cancer diagnosis had caused a patient’s cancer to progress to a terminal stage.

On Thursday (28 Feb), Facebook user Laurence Pang expressed his disappointment with CGH. Mr Pang recounts that he had been suffering from chest pain for many months but local polyclinic doctors he had consulted many times had not found anything wrong with him.

In January, Mr Pang had suffered severe chest pain in the middle of the night and had been rushed to CGH’s emergency department, where he had spent an entire night under observation. Although doctors there had not found anything amiss with Mr Pang, they referred him to CGH’s cardiac clinic for a follow-up.

The cardiac clinic doctors also did find anything wrong with Mr Pang and recommended that he “go for treadmill and ECG”. They also scheduled Mr Pang for a follow-up appointment in March.

Aghast at the long waiting period until his follow-up appointment, Mr Pang wrote online: “Here I was having regular severe chest pain, and they had to make me wait for another 2 months for this? I tried asking for an earlier date. Sorry, full house.”

On 19 Feb, Mr Pang suffered severe chest pain again. Unwilling to go back to CGH, he asked to be sent to the National University Hospital (NUH) instead. He recalls:

“This time, I didn’t want to go to Changi General Hospital…They put me under observation, asked me some random questions, after which they warded me for a specialist to see me.

“The next morning, one cardiac specialist came, asked me some random questions again. She decided that my chest pain had something to do with my heart. Sent me for some tests, injected me with some dye, and came out with the result: I had 2 blocked arteries, 80% & 90%, that needed immediate remedy.”

That same afternoon, Mr Pang was rolled into the operating theatre where doctors conducted an angioplasty procedure.

While the surgery went so well to the point he was discharged the very next day, Mr Pang expressed concern over what his condition might have been had he been treated at CGH again instead of NUH. He said:

“If I had gone back to Changi Gen Hospital, I don’t know what would have happened. what would they have done? Or kept me waiting again? I don’t understand why the doctors in CGH could not find out what was the matter with me.”

Read his post in full here:

https://theindependent.sg.sg/changi-general-hospital-found-guilty-of-medical-negligence-in-stage-iv-cancer-patient/