Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Last week, I worked with a nurse by the name of Natalie Dizon. Ms. Dizon has allowed me to tell her story.

Ms. Dizon had a pelvic procedure done by Dr. Schlomo Raz at UCLA. After that first procedure, she claims that she was in agonizing pain, and believed that something had been left in her during the surgery.

After a while, Dr. Raz took Nurse Dizon back to the OR. After recovery from the second visit to the OR, Ms. Dizon says that the previous great pain was gone. Ms. Dizon stated that, during recovery, another nurse, who had been present during the second procedure, told Ms. Dizon that Dr. Raz had taken a surgical sponge (apparently left there after the first procedure) out of her. That would have explained the pain, as well as the sudden disappearance of the pain after another visit to the operating room.

Nurse Dizon then tried to get her medical records to find out what had happened in the OR. Despite the fact that all the information in the medical records is hers, she was not given all the medical records, but only face sheets and billing information. In the meantime, she states that she was told that the presence of the surgical sponge on the second procedure had not been documented, and there was no point in looking for a record to indicate it's existence.

Just another UCLA data point.