Dr. Reshma Shaikh
The untimely tragic loss of my mother post planned spinal surgery is the harm which me and my family faced in Aug’2010. I had chosen best surgeon, best hospital and best team yet things worked differently for her. Post operatively she was mismanaged; her blood sugars were not controlled. She was in crucial pain which was just been managed with paracetamol, which was clearly not helpful. I kept on asking her doctors, the anaesthetist yet I was told this is how it is to be managed. I was unaware of pain management at that time, I believed whatever the doctor said is best for her and on the 7th day of her surgery where she came walking, she was no more.
I strongly feel she died of her pain. This event has completely blown away me and my family, it was then I started processing this event, searching materials, scanning her notes, asking people and reading whatever I found about patient safety subject.
Over the years I have done many safety initiatives at the hospital such as surgical safety checklist, medication safety, implementation of patient safety goals. Each year from the time of inception of World Patient Safety day by WHO, at my hospital I conduct Patient safety week with activities of training, audits, compliances, staff engagement, competitions etc of patient safety protocols based on each year’s World Patient safety day theme. However, this is a long journey which is just began, I am continuously on move to see how we can involve family and patients in patient safety as here involving patient and families is most neglected and whatever happens is happens.
