Dear Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh,

I write to you as a cit­i­zen of T&T who has been pay­ing all rel­e­vant tax­es in­clu­sive of health sur­charge for the past 25 years, to high­light an ex­pe­ri­ence which must be of in­ter­est to you as it per­tains to an over­whelm­ing lack of com­pas­sion, care and con­cern at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal dur­ing an emer­gency.

Sir, where will you take your moth­er who is se­ri­ous­ly ill?

I was faced with this sce­nario on the No­vem­ber 3, where my moth­er who suf­fers from di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion, both of which are be­ing man­aged well for some years now, be­came ill and un­con­scious with­in 5 min­utes of first symp­toms.

Pan­ic set in and my broth­er and I did what we can to keep her life­less body breath­ing. I im­me­di­ate­ly called the EMS as this ap­peared to be the quick­est way to get her to health care, con­sid­er­ing the dire cir­cum­stances.

This is what fol­lows:

• Called 811 three times–on each oc­ca­sion, I got all agents were busy, need to wait un­til they are avail­able. Calls placed at 2:21 pm, 2:22 pm and 2:27 pm on No­vem­ber 3.

• As in this sit­u­a­tion every sec­ond counts, I de­cid­ed to dri­ve her to the hos­pi­tal. On reach­ing the hos­pi­tal, at the Am­bu­lance Bay with the haz­ard light flash­ing, no one around ap­peared alarmed. The guard looked at me and said, “yes sir?” I told him I had a med­ical emer­gency, and he di­rect­ed me to the agents who can help, “through the glass door and the first door on the left”, he said.

• On meet­ing the agents, I ex­plained the med­ical emer­gency. One guy who was writ­ing, con­tin­ued writ­ing, and the oth­er agent said she has to find a wheel­chair. I was shocked at the lack of em­pa­thy, not even a pre­tence of con­cern. As I con­tin­ued to look at the agent in dis­be­lief of her re­sponse, she stern­ly said, “I told you I have to find a wheel­chair!”.

• I went back to the am­bu­lance bay to check on my moth­er- still un­con­scious but breath­ing heav­i­ly.

• NO ONE CAME TO LOOK AT MY MOTH­ER AND TO MAKE ANY EN­QUIRES OR MED­ICAL EVAL­U­A­TION.

• There were two am­bu­lances in the bay and four agents in light blue shirts walk­ing around. I told one of them we have an emer­gency and need­ed a trol­ley and he said all trol­leys are in use, but will check.

• Af­ter 20mins, with no progress at the hos­pi­tal, with the life of my moth­er at risk and get­ting worse, as her breath­ing was los­ing rhythm, I had no choice but to leave the in­ef­fec­tive San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in search of a pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion.

• On reach­ing the pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion, things hap­pen quick­ly, staff were alert­ed, the head nurse was is­su­ing or­ders, doc­tors were check­ing my moth­er and ques­tion­ing us and nurs­es were in at­ten­dance. Since the start of this or­deal, there was fi­nal­ly a sigh of re­lief, as my moth­er was in the pres­ence of peo­ple who cared. She re­cov­ered lat­er that day.

This ex­pe­ri­ence has led me to ques­tion whether the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is in bad shape. It is a far cry from be­ing a peo­ple-cen­tred, car­ing, proac­tive in­sti­tu­tion that as­sures stan­dards of ex­cel­lence.

1. Do we have prop­er process­es but in­com­pe­tent per­son­nel?

2. Do we have bad process­es and in­com­pe­tent per­son­nel?

3. Do we have com­pe­tent man­age­ment with ma­ture sys­tems, poli­cies and per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors, where­by bad process­es and in­com­pe­tent per­son­nel can be iden­ti­fied and dealt with?

4. What are the best prac­tices for emer­gency med­ical care, and how does the emer­gency-rel­e­vant staff at the hos­pi­tal mea­sure up?

This low qual­i­ty of ser­vice must be a con­cern of yours.

It can­not and must not be tol­er­at­ed.

I urge you to eval­u­ate this sit­u­a­tion. I have pro­vid­ed de­tails so that you can ex­am­ine and make de­ci­sive and quick sus­tain­able ac­tions to re­solve the in­ef­fec­tive­ness of the EMS and staff our in­sti­tu­tions with com­pe­tent per­son­nel. The core val­ues of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, to­tal qual­i­ty and client-cen­tred­ness were se­vere­ly lack­ing with no dis­cernible at­tempt at com­pli­ance.

I do hope that this let­ter and the prob­lems iden­ti­fied will be treat­ed with the se­ri­ous­ness they de­serve and that you are firm­ly ded­i­cat­ed to con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment.

Health care must be in­de­pen­dent of pol­i­tics, wealth, pow­er and fam­i­ly re­la­tions: I am a tax­pay­ing cit­i­zen and I de­mand a high qual­i­ty of ser­vice.

So now, where will you take your moth­er if she is se­ri­ous­ly ill?

I look for­ward to your re­sponse.

Yours re­spect­ful­ly,