Threat of prison for nurse for reporting a doctor

[Adsos Letter]

Source: The New York Times (via The Seattle Times, apparently...)
KEVIN SACK

KERMIT, Texas — It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.

When she was fingerprinted and photographed at the jail in Kermit last June, she thought she had entered a parallel universe, albeit one in a barren scrap of West Texas oil patch.

"It was surreal," said Mitchell, 52, the wife of an oil-field mechanic and mother of a teenage son. "I said, 'how can this be?' You can't go to prison for doing the right thing."

But in what may be an unprecedented prosecution, Mitchell is scheduled to stand trial in state court on Monday for "misuse of official information," a third-degree felony in Texas.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011003845_nurse07.html

[Motown_Johnny]

1. isn't there some "whistle blower" law to help this poor woman?

[old mark]

2. Doctors have a lot of power, even the criminally bad ones. Many of the

"privacy" laws supposed to protect patient information are actually being used to shield bad doctors from lawsuits or even prosecution. Doctors take care of other doctors first and foremost...



mark

[Hannah Bell]

13. yes, they protect each other - even when they disparage the docs they're protecting

in private conversations, they'll still protect them publicly.

[old mark]

14. You are right. My former doctor whose misdiagnoses almost killed me,

was mocked and laughed at by other doctors whe I told of that incident, and I also found a doctor who told me that my former doc had a reputation as an idiot. He is still practicing, has never had any bad publicity or ill effects. He is truly burying his mistakes.

mark

[aquart]

3. Jury nullification, anyone?

I'm damn sure I wouldn't convict her.

[bobburgster]

4. Unbelieveable!

"When the medical board notified Arafiles of the anonymous complaint, he protested to his friend, the Winkler County sheriff, that he was being harassed."

Only in freakin Texas would a judge allow this.

[MichaelHarris]

5. My wife is a doctor

we have seen so many nurse complaints over doctors she has hired recently. It's funny, they were all doctors of color. There was a very recent Dateline show about a nurses complaint against a surgeon over organ harvesting. Every single one of her complaints proved to be false. he was from India. I know Kermit, my Mom was born there, I can see where a doctor named Rolando Arafiles Jr. may have some trouble.

If you doubt any of this got to any hospital you like, be a fly on the wall at any nurses station in America. You want the definition of gossip and cattyness? You'll find it a nurses station.

[Truth2Tell]

6. Shorter MichaelHarris:

Nurses are catty lying racists. Did I mention my wife is a doctor?

[tavalon]

8. Were you rephrasing what he said or agreeing with him?

[Truth2Tell]

9. summarizing

to lay bare the sheer dumbness

[tavalon]

10. That's why I was asking

I could see it either way.

[MichaelHarris]

11. I

was going to respond to your post but I'm sure you're very busy.

[tavalon]

7. I'm a nurse with 20 years of experience

Many nurses are catty, unfortunately. The slave class that is nursing acts just like any other slave class -with horizontal violence. But, quite a few doctors are poor practitioners and some are downright dangerous. I've reported a couple to their State Medical Board to no avail. The shocking thing here is that rather than investigating this complaint, they've arrested the nurse.

Oh, and btw, I'm sure your wife is a great doctor. That doesn't mean that all of them are. It's still quite the good old boy network, though. The fact that women have joined the fraternity doesn't mean diddly. It's a fucked up, closed system and they protect their own. Heck, if it weren't such a fucked up system, we nurses might do well to emulate it. Instead, we play divide and conquer.

[MichaelHarris]

12. Women haven't

joined the fraternity, the boys let them play up to a point. It's so bad at the hospitals I've worked in and the one's my wife has practiced in that the administration has had to put policies in place concerning gossip and false employee complaints and accusations. She see's false accusations against both physicians and nurses that prove to be untrue. The most recent one ended up being because a nurse wanted another one's shift. I took the time to respond to you because you chose intelligence over hatefulness. The other poster would have been a waste of my time.