ER Doctor Suspended After Mocking Young Patient Suffering Severe Anxiety Attack In Hospital

An emergency room doctor at El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos has been suspended after an enraged father videotaped her berating and mocking his 20-year-old son, who was seeking treatment there for a severe panic attack. Samuel Bardwell, who recently began attending West Valley College in Saratoga, was rushed in after collapsing during a basketball practice as he was suffering pain and severe numbness as a result of an extreme anxiety attack. However, when his father Donald rushed to be by his son’s side, he was shocked at the treatment Samuel received.

1. Where was the doctor’s compassion? According to Donald, not only did Samuel wait for more than three hours to receive medical help, but when Dr. Beth Keegstra did eventually come to his aid, she brought a security guard with her and accused the student of seeking drugs. That’s when Donald began recording the incident.
2. She treated him terribly. In addition to yanking him by the arms, insisting he sit up, and telling him that he was the “least sick” person in the hospital, she also claimed that he was trying to get “narcotics” out of the hospital because he simply asked for anything she could give him to help him feel better. At one point, Samuel told Keegstra that he couldn’t breathe, only for her to mockingly reply, “He can’t inhale! Wow! He must be dead. Are you dead, sir? I don’t understand, you are breathing just fine.”
3. Samuel was the one who asked his dad to record what happened. “I knew from when she said something to the security guard … I already knew from that point … I said, ‘Please, dad, can you please take out your phone? … I need you to take out your phone now cause I have a feeling something is gonna happen,” Samuel recounted to ABC News. Sadly, he wasn’t wrong.
4. Keegstra, who’s been a practicing doctor for 31 years, has been suspended. After Donald’s video was uploaded to Facebook and went viral, Dan Wood, the chief executive officer of El Camino Hospital revealed that Keegstra had been suspended as her “demeanor was unprofessional and not the standard we require of all who provide care through El Camino Hospital.” He went on to add: “We have expressed our sincere apologies and are working directly with the patient on this matter,” Wood said, according to SFGate. “Please know that we take this matter very seriously and the contracted physician involved has been removed from the work schedule, pending further investigation.”