Government hospitals in Malaysia are notorious for their incredibly long waiting times, overcrowding and lack of manpower. This has gotten worse recently with many Malaysians taking to social media to vent their frustrations about their bad experiences at hospitals.
The situation has worsened to the point that a psychiatric patient even stabbed another middle-aged patient yesterday (February 14) at 3pm.
It is alleged that the suspect did so because because he was agitated about being stranded in the Emergency Department (ED) of Selayang Hospital, Gombak while waiting for a bed in the wards. It is understood that the hospital wards were full at the time.
According to a report by The Straits Times, the victim, who is a dengue patient, was stabbed 3 times by the suspect, once in the back and twice in the abdomen. He had to undergo surgery for his injuries and to remove the knife that got wedged in his abdomen.
It is reported that the suspect had taken the knife from the staff nurse pantry.
“Stabbing is not due to overcrowding”
Speaking on the incident at a press conference, Tan Sri Noor Hisham Abdullah emphasised that the stabbing by the psychiatric patient was NOT due to overcrowding at the Selayang Hospital Emergency Department.
The Health director-general explained that psychiatric patients can act unexpectedly anywhere. “If a psychiatric patient is mentally disturbed, he will pose a problem even if he is not in the hospital.”
“Therefore, the standard operating procedure (SOP) for managing psychiatric patients brought by police officers to get treatment at health facilities needs to be streamlined to avoid unexpected situations such as this.”
“The Emergency Department is always overcrowded but the issue is SOP. If he is a psychiatric patient, we have to have SOP so that we can take care of the safety of other patients,” he said.
Meanwhile, the victim is now in stable condition and is currently under the observation of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital.
That must’ve been so traumatic for everyone present. We hope the authorities will take this incident seriously and implement the necessary precautions to prevent such incidents from happening again.
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