An emergency room physician has been suspended after a video of her mocking a patient claiming to be suffering from an anxiety attack was posted to Facebook, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In the video, Dr. Beth Keegstra, of El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos, is seen doubting Samuel Bardwell’s account of what happened to him, saying, “You are the least sick of all the people who are here, who are dying. So you put your head up. Don’t try to tell me you can’t move. Come on. Sit up.”
She tries to force Bardwell to sit up by pulling at his arm, even though he clearly tells her that he is unable to.
“You want us to wheel you to tour house in a gurney?,” she asks him.
Bardwell was hospitalized Monday after experiencing an anxiety attack after a basketball practice. His father, Donald, said Samuel has a history of anxiety attacks, for which he takes Klonopin. It treats seizures, panic disorder, and anxiety. Samuel had not been taking the sedative leading up the Monday anxiety attack.
“She never first came in and introduced herself,” Donald said. “She never said her name, she never asked for his name, she never really examined him.”
Keegstra even accused Donald and his son of coming in for drugs.
“She said, ‘I know why you people are here, you people who come here for drugs,’ and I said ‘What do you mean you people?’” Donald said. “She was rambling on so angrily that’s why I pulled out my phone.”
El Camino Hospital released a statement saying that Keegstra has been “removed from the work schedule, pending further investigation.”
“This week, a patient who visited the emergency department at our Los Gatos campus had an interaction with a physician whose demeanor was unprofessional and not the standard we require of all who provide care through El Camino Hospital,” the hospital said. “We have expressed our sincere apologies and are working directly with the patient on this matter.”
This story is pretty much is Exhibit A about the racism black people experience in the medical world. And one has to wonder if Keegstra has done this before.
I’d wager that she has.
If you want to see Keegstra’s atrocious treatment, you can see the video below. It is really bad. But had it not been recorded, this doctor probably would still be treating other patients as badly as she treated Samuel.
