Doctor ordered to pay Rs 2 lakh compensation to woman

A district consumer court here has ordered a doctor to pay Rs two lakh in compensation to a woman for attending on her "very carelessly and negligently without following standard norms of practice" for which she had to suffer for over one and half two years.
Complainant Srabani Deb was admitted to a nursing home here on January 7, 2006 with complaints of pain in her abdomen and was discharged on January 12 of the same year after laparoscopic cholecystectomy.
However, she revisited the nursing home ten days later with complaints of acute pain and Pratap Sanyal, her surgeon, advised her to take milk of magnesia.

As the pain persisted, she consulted another doctor who advised her to undergo a CT Scan which found a foreign body in the right lower abdominal wall.
The woman underwent a second surgery at a nursing home in Kolkata on October 30, 2007 and a eight-inch long corrugated drain pipe was removed from the abdomen of the patient.
President of District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, S C Saha, in his order of November 13 last asked Sanyal to pay Rs one lakh as compensation towards medical expenses for undergoing the second surgery in Kolkata, Rs 50,000 for the mental agony caused to the patient and another Rs 50,000 as cost of litigation within 45 days of the judgement, failing which the amount payable will carry an interest of 9 per cent per annum.

The judgment, the copy of which was available today, said the doctor attended on the patient "very carelessly and negligently without following standard norms of practice" for which she had to suffer a lot for a prolonged period of about more than one year and nine months since the date of first operation.