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The grandmothers had to search all over town
“Until it touched my loved ones, I had no idea what could happen. My grandmother was lying in a nursing home in Kaunas. Unexpectedly, we received a call saying that she began to suffocate and she is taken to the Kaunas clinics. The daughter of the Kaunas Clinic, who has the right to care for her mother because she is a person with special needs, was unable to visit her due to the procedure related to the coronavirus. He advised her to call and contact the doctors every two hours until the tests were done.
We called maybe 10 times that day, but it was difficult to contact, the diagnoses changed with each call, not much was said about the patient’s specific condition, especially as more and more doctors were responding.
Finally, the resident who answered in the night reported that she had a heart attack, was in poor condition and ordered to call again after 2 pm When we called again in the evening, around 7 pm it turned out that grandmother DINGO. Not knowing how a person could have disappeared hours after a heart attack, we started asking more questions. Then we found out that she was being transported to another hospital. The doctor communicated with us reluctantly, in an inappropriate and vulgar way, and we were very concerned.
We rushed to call all the hospitals in Kaunas, but my grandmother was nowhere to be found. Fortunately, while we explained the whole situation to the nurses at the Kaunas Clinical Hospital from the beginning, data about the new patient appeared in their institution’s system. It was our grandmother. If it wasn’t for this long conversation, we wouldn’t have found it anyway.
Hospital staff were surprised that relatives were not warned that the patient was being transferred to another location. In addition, we found out that she had not been able to eat or drink in the hospital during all that time, ”said her grandmother’s granddaughter.
Loved ones were even more surprised to learn that there was no heart attack. However, the doctors could not save the patient; died of her underlying disease: heart failure.
According to the young woman, due to the patient’s visitation procedure related to COVID-19, she did not see her grandmother for several months. After all, after the quarantine was abolished, nursing home patients were allowed to visit for some time, but when the wearing of masks was again introduced to the country, visits were banned. Therefore, this loss is especially painful for her.
Hospital response
According to Karolina Vaikšnoraitė, chief specialist of the communication service of the Kaunas clinics, a 77-year-old woman was taken to the emergency department of the Kaunas clinics due to respiratory failure. This condition can be due to acute myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, exacerbation of chronic heart failure as a result of comorbidities and age-related changes, as well as other lung diseases. The patient was consulted in the ward by a cardiologist, who underwent the necessary blood tests, ultrasound of the heart and computed tomography of the chest.
We want to apologize to our loved ones in advance if we cannot always show as much attention as we would like.
After these studies, the diagnoses of acute myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolism were ruled out and were aggravated by comorbidities and exacerbations of chronic heart failure aggravated by the age of the patient, who could be treated at the Level II health center to which he was transferred.
“Patients who are unaware of what medical interventions may be necessary during treatment should not eat or drink, as the accumulation of food and gas that occurs in the intestine during digestion can complicate the course of the study and the quality of the images. In this case, maximum attention was paid to the patient and a very detailed examination was performed to determine the cause of the exacerbation.
We regret that due to the high occupancy of the unit and the changed working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, staff were able to pay less attention to the patient’s family members.
Emergency department staff receive a large number of calls from patient family members, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when family visits and visitor access to the hospital are restricted. We understand that this is a concern for family members, so the hospital staff is constantly trying to provide family members with the necessary information about the patient’s condition and reassure them, however, due to intensive work, they are not always able to answer calls. and respond to all concerns.
Approximately 200 people visit the Kaunas Clinics Emergency Department every day for a variety of reasons, some of which need help right away, and as flu season approaches, the flow of patients will increase even more, thus that we want to apologize in advance if we can not always show as much attention as we would like “, – said a representative of the institution.
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