Agricultural worker Paulo Faustino has learnt to bitter regret that hospitals in Portugal don’t always aspire to the miracles of TV drama.
When he lost his middle finger in a nasty accident, he hoped at the very least that doctors would try to save it.
But José Gameiro Santos – a “surgical general assistant and graduate” according to Santarém Hospital – clearly did not think the effort worth it.
Without inspecting Faustino’s mangled hand, he told firemen to throw the severed middle finger into the rubbish.
Faustino, with his damaged hand now in a large bandage, has lodged a complaint for negligence, saying more should have been done.
But Santarém Hospital has explained that when fingers are severed due to being crushed, reimplantation surgery is impossible.
Gameiro Santos has “large experience”, said the hospital, and everything done in this case was “surgically and clinically correct”.
