I am a resident of Romania (From the USA), my wife is a citizen. In June of 2023, I was a patient at Saint Pantelimon in Bucuresti, and almost died as a result of their negligence. I have photos I took while I was in the hospital that show my condition, screenshots I took when messaging my wife telling her the Nurses would not help me and no doctor was coming as I was going in to anaphylactic shock and my throat was closing, and at one point the nurses even shutting the doors on the patients and leaving the lights on as "punishment" for being too loud as an old elderly Romanian man was screaming Doamna, Doamna with his urine bag full of blood. I also have screenshots of the messages my wife sent to the Doctor who was in charge of me at Sf. Pantelimon threatening to call 112 to rescue me because I was dying and the nurses and doctors would not help. We paid for a consult with a lawyer to pursue malpractice, but was told ultimately, it was more likely than not the paperwork regarding what happened to me would "disappear" from the hospital if I attempted to pursue legal action (meaning they'd destroy any evidence), even though I had plenty of damning evidence in messages and photos.
I was admitted to Victor Babes due to a severe reaction I was having that was causing my head to swell dangerously large. Victor Babes could not diagnose the problem, and in the early hours of my first night in Victor Babes, I started to go into anaphylactic shock. Immediately I was woken up and put in an ICU and a transfer was initiated to send me to Saint Pantelimon Bucuresti. When I arrived, I was stabilized in the emergency room, before being moved to a ward on the 3rd floor if I remember correctly (Next to the ICU station). I was placed on a combination of antibiotics, antihistamines, and a steroid as they were treating it as an allergic reaction (although I had no known allergies).
On the second day in Saint Pantelimon, late that evening, I started to have a burning sensation and rash appear on my body that was literally moving around causing severe pain and I was having trouble breathing. The night nurses came in and I asked if they could get a doctor because it was getting harder to breathe, they said they would get one and I tried to go to sleep. I woke up again at around 2-3AM that morning, to an old man (there were 6 patients in the ward) screaming for "Doamna, Doamna" to the Nurse aid. Instead of coming to check on him, they told him to stop being so loud, they turned the lights on and shut the door as a kind of punishment so we could not sleep due to the lights, and shutting the door so they didn't have to hear us. By around 3-4AM my throat was almost completely closed. I was messaging my wife on Facebook this whole time telling her I had told the nurses i needed a doctor and i could not breathe. I sent her photos of my swollen neck and told her the Nurses kept telling me they'd get a doctor, but they never did. Eventually, my wife started messaging the doctor that if someone doesn't come right now she would call 112 and move me to another hospital.
Almost 4 hours after my throat began to collapse, the doctor showed up for her morning shift, and when they saw me, there was absolute panic. I was rushed down the hall to the ICU where on the brink of death, i was brought back with not one, not two, but THREE doses of Adrenaline shots to stop the reaction. The whole time as I was about to face death, i was telling my wife how much i loved her and to take care of our child. This was the closest to death I had ever been.
When my wife arrived shortly after, she began to yell at the doctors for no one coming when i was begging in help (No one spoke english except for my doctor in the morning), and the fact that she had spoken to them in Romanian and no one ever came to help me. The Doctor stated that no one told her I was having an emergency, and that it was a miscommunication. Also, we came to find out, that I was supposed to receive my antihistamine while I was asleep that night, Doxycline i believe, but my medication was NEVER ADMINISTERED leading to the near death anaphylactic shock.
These problems with Saint Pantelimon go far deeper than what happened this year. Had i not had the fear of the hospital (destroying) the paperwork of what happened to me, as the lawyer said would probably happen, I would have taken them to court for malpractice. Maybe had we actually tried to file a lawsuit when this happened, some lives would have been saved and they would have made some reforms, because this incident was beyond anything I have ever seen or heard in my life in both the US and Germany which are the only two emergency hospitals I had ever been in.
We were scared to pursue them at the time, because the lawyer was pretty convincing when she said the evidence would somehow "disappear", but now that it seems Sf. Pantelimon is being held accountable, I just wanted to share my story, because that was the most traumatic experience of my life.
I have all of the screenshots of the texts i sent my wife that day as I was in anaphylactic shock, pictures of the door closed in the hospital at 3am when patients were screaming for help from the night nurses, and the messages I thought would be my last to my wife telling her to raise my child to be a good boy and man. I also have messages my wife sent to the Dr that morning threatening to call 112 if someone doesn't help me after 4 hours of begging for help. I contacted ProTV to share this story as well, as this is a problem that should have been fixed a long time ago with the staff at Sf. Pantelimon (I love Romania, it is my home, and in general I have wonderful experiences with the medical personnel in this country), but when a licensed lawyer tells you that they have will, and ability to possibly destroy evidence to cover their malpractice, it really just hit hard.
If anyone is interested in the follow up with the screenshots, i'll be happy to provide those, but i'm just happy I can finally share my story after a year of feeling like I had been almost killed by a hospital that was invincible to malpractice, now that Romania is holding them accountable.
EDIT :
I'm providing evidence to support this claim as requested.
The Dr's name is being erased for her privacy.
Update 1:
Someone from a media outlet contacted me and we'll be speaking to them this evening after we get our child to sleep.
by Romerican423
28 comments
I am sorry you had to go though this madness 🙁
Police might also be interested in your story. Look into making a formal complain
St. Pantelimon is much renowned as the hospital of death, so consider yourself lucky.
It’s only been a year, fuck sue them now!!!!
I’m very sorry you had to go through this.
What was the official diagnosis?
>but when a licensed lawyer tells you that they have will, and ability to possibly destroy evidence to cover their
malpractice, it really just hit hard.
If I were you, I would not give up so easily.
Have you tried to talk to another lawyer?
> I contacted ProTV to share this story as well,
When did you contact ProTV exactly about this?
pray you lord and say thks your alive..
You should 100% pursue legal action. As an american citizen you’ll see a totally different brand of justice. The american embassy will pay attention and the romanian justice system fears that.
I’d say you have a duty so that this doesn’t happen to other patients. Even if yes, there will be a lot of pushback, trust me, you being an american citizen will make a massive difference.
Please, try and do something. You’ll be surprised.
Screenshots and further proof would really help in validating your claim. I’m not saying you are lying but I think claims like these can have dire consequences in the real world when unsubstantiated.
Just today in one of the threads regarding the cases in Pantelimon [someone was threatening to kill the doctors involved ](https://www.reddit.com/r/bucuresti/comments/1en38d0/șerban_bubenek_șeful_societății_române_de_ati/lh3idaq) if they are not sentenced.
As you can see such issues should be handled by the proper authorities not randos on Reddit.
It’s unlikely to win a malpractice suit in Romania, and even if you win, the damages will be ridiculously small, not like in the USA.
However, it’s a good idea to sue if you can afford it just to inconvenience them.
Unfortunately it is common in Romanian hospitals for the whole staff to sleep during the night. There is no service for the patiens, even in life or death situations like yours. I am very glad you survived. You should have called 112 yourself from the hospital or your partner should have. It’s the only way to leave a trail that something is wrong and to activate them because all internal hospital docs can be forged. But don’t threaten to call 112 before doing so because they might take your phone.
Welcome to Romania my friend!
You wanted the romanian experience well ain’t no truer experience than this lol. Should’ve gone to a private hospital
This is horrible, sounds like a nightmare. I am so sorry you had to go through this!!!
I suggest you send your story to the press, especially the most independent ones like PressOne or Recorder. Every institution is afraid of them lately.
Saving this for those threads where people talk about moving back to romania.
Please submit this to the local press, generally malpractice here is so commonplace that you need to publish your story in a newspaper for something to actually happen as they cover all their tracks otherwise
Unfortunately it’s known for quite a while that Pantelimon is the worse hospital and nobody wants to be sent there.
Romania: the country where everyone complains about corruption while indirectly supporting corruption.
It is like everybody lost their will to fight. I’ve never seen a nation more scared of authority. Don’t get the teachers mad in school, be another brick. Don’t upset the priests, they know better and God is on their side. “Tip” the clerk at the City Hall processing your request, otherwise your rights might vanish in the cool summer breeze. Don’t stand up in front of your doctors or they will let you die.
This became a plague, affecting our minds to the degree where we have lawyers refusing to do their job. The famous romanian saying: don’t mess with THEM kid, they’ll screw you up. We are afraid of this “THEM” to the point where we accept a death sentence from them.
This country will not change until we fight like our grandparrents. We don’t learn about the battes of Mărăști, Oituz, Mărășești just to feel better we had some victories. We were outnumbered and outgunned, but we won. Why? Because we used what we had without thinking we will lose. We didn’t put our guns down and surrendered. We fought for our right to exist and live by our own rules. That blood still runs through our veins and I wonder what else we need to lose to start fighting back like our grandparrents.
Imagine being a hospital, a place where you should feel safe and a place where everything should be done to save your life, and you feel closer to death than you’ve ever felt before. Unfathomable. I’m sorry you went through that.
The whole country is rotten from top to bottom and I don’t know if it will ever be fixed.
Sue them. Now.
Make an official complaint.
Also : send this to a news station .
And Name Names.
Now that the spotlight is on their asses someone will look into it. Whether there is much left after this time … I don’t know.
But you owe it to yourself to fuck those assholes just a little bit.
Good health to you my dude, glad you’re still with us!
Malsprasi*!
Sorry I couldn’t resist.
Unde sunt imbecilii aia care tot spun ca in Romania e mai bine decat in strainatate?
Don’t even know what they call it Saint Pantelimon, cause surely there ain’t no saints in there. Seriously now, don’t let your situation slip away & do whatever necessary to hold them accountable so that you can prevent a precedent.
Maybe share your story with the investigating prosecutors and give them more munition against those bastards!
urât-urât de tot
It probably isn’t even the doctor’s fault, but the nurses. They tend to … sleep instead of give medication at the prescribed hour.
When I was a resident, my coordinator asked us (resident doctors) to administer medication ourselves, because the nurses simply *pretended* to work.
A big part of the issue is that nurses give bribes to get into the medidal field and they simply buy their jobs. Before doing this they make some shit 3 year school which they graduate the same way – giving bribes. Therefore, most of the nurses have no idea what needs to be done when serious shit is halpening, and if no doctor is around they are simply… monkeys.
This is very scary but it’s true. For basic things they are useful otherwise they only consume air within the hospital rooms.
So, as long as they know they literraly bought their jobs, they don’t give a shit about patients because they paid for that, right?
Anyhow, I’m glad you are ok and that you managed to get through the awful event but I believe you should take some action. As everyone here says, it might matter more than you think, for us romanians and for you as long as you plan to continue living here.
We have amazing doctors in this country, but when it comes to nurses… god help us all! If you bribe them (nurses) you might get some basic medical attrntion, otherwise you’re simply… fucked!
The problem with all this FUCKING FUCK-UP-ERY, in my eyes, and sorry for the rant is that: WE DON’T CHOSE OUR MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS!
Let me elaborate and give some examples, although there are many out there and everybody has a story:
Everyone is taxed by the government for medical insurance, however it only insures you with the state hospitals, which is in itself a problem because they never innovate or modernize, because why would they, if they’re getting the money anyway. It’s not like Netflix is afraid you’ll jump to Disney so they WORK (important word here) to make their program more appealing.
I have a friend that works with his hands who had an accident and he had to go to private healthcare (pay his own money) because the state would have just stabilized his hands and called it a day. My father in law who was misdiagnosed just so he could stay in the system and keep scheduling procedures until we saw a private doctor (paid again with our money) that debunked all that and spared the poor man of 5+ hospital/clinic visits.
So, I ask you, what use is the Public Healthcare System if almost everyone that has a real problem HAS TO appeal to a Private Medical Professional (using their own money). WHY are we giving away our money to a system that we aren’t planning on using in its current form?!
We are double dipping in medical expenses here. We’re giving out taxes to the State Healthcare AND we’re using the remaining money to actually pay a doctor who gives a damn and treats us right.
It’s like paying for a Netflix Subscription monthly when all you do is watch YouTube…
WHY OH WHY, because I do understand the need for Health Insurance, doesn’t the State make it Mandatory (like it is right now), but let us CHOOSE which provider to go for?! Sure, make the state provider a default (so those that don’t wanna change are already insured), but make it so that other people can just OPT for another provider. THUS creating competition, every private medical facility will scramble to get us the best deals and the best care, because they will be afraid we’ll chose another better provider. ALL OF THIS is for OUR benefit!!!
That’s how capitalism should work, none of this misguided Socialism that has no fear we’ll “unsubscribe” from them, BECAUSE WE CAN’T!!!! We’re in a FREE DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY and WE CAN’T CHOOSE where OUR MONEY goes. WE CAN’T CHOOSE WHO TREATS US!!!! Of course the Public system is SHIT. They have no reason to innovate or do better because there’s no risk for people “unsubscribing”, because they can’t!!! FUCKING DEMOCRACY!!!!
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk I guess….
many romanian lawyers would be instantly disbarred in the US or Western Europe.
i think you may get over the evidence tampering concerns by asking the hospital for the documents regarding your admittance and treatment. they should be required to provide them under GDPR regulations.