Recently, in Ningxia, China, a 73-year-old man felt discomfort in his heart and went to the hospital for a check-up. The ultrasound report showed “intrauterine pregnancy with possible embryo stoppage,” sparking a flurry of reactions online.
According to mainland media reports, on January 22nd, the 73-year-old patient, Mr. Chen, went to the People’s Hospital of Wuzhong City in Ningxia for an ultrasound examination due to feeling unwell in his heart.
On January 29th, when the family checked the electronic report through the hospital’s public account, they found a report labeled as “Color Doppler Ultrasound Routine Examination (Gynecology)” which indicated: “Intrauterine pregnancy: possible embryo stoppage,” and detailed descriptions of uterine morphology, gestational sac size, and other gynecological indicators, with the patient’s gender in the report stated as male.
After the family exposed the incident online, on January 30th, the People’s Hospital of Wuzhong City issued a statement explaining that the information on the paper report given on the same day was correct, and the error in the electronic report uploaded on the 29th was due to system malfunctions and human oversight during inspection. The hospital has apologized to the patient and initiated a comprehensive inspection of electronic reports from the same period.
The incident has caused a credibility crisis for the hospital, with netizens expressing disbelief, “I mean, come on, doctors, if the machine makes a mistake, can’t you tell if the elderly person is a man or a woman?” “Do men even have a uterus?” “How unreliable can this get?”
“The first reaction after a problem shouldn’t be shifting responsibility, but taking responsibility. Instead of emphasizing that the paper report was error-free, the hospital is trying to blame system malfunctions, is this the professionalism of Chinese doctors? What if someone misdiagnoses HIV or cancer, scaring the patient to death on the spot, who will take responsibility for that?” “If such an obvious error was noticed, how do they handle more serious mistakes that non-professionals might not catch?” “Amazing, my country!”