The need for physicians to grieve after medical error

in Uncategorized | 31 responses

As seen in this blog, there is very little sympathy for physicians who make medical error. Believe it or not, most take it personally:

The media often talks about the pain visited upon patients and families by medical errors (which is very real), but rarely do they talk about the pain and suffering experienced by medical professionals after medical errors.
Sure, there are those healthcare professionals who are cold and callous and truly don’t care, but the vast majority of doctors and nurses suffer greatly after a medical error. They beat themselves up and literally grieve . . .
. . . Healthcare professionals being told not to heal patients and families who have been hurt only makes a bad situation worse. There are countless stories of clinical depression, ruined careers, divorces, and even suicides among healthcare professionals after medical errors.

Comments

Anonymous
Agreed. Posters on this blog have given a very perturbed view. One of the physicians in my group the other day was nearly inconsolable after administering a medication to a patient that she was allergic to (but failed to inform the staff and physician). The harm was monor and self limited. The notion that providers don’t care is absurd. Even when involved in lawsuits that have no merit it affects colleagues profoundly with long term serious effects
Dr.Steve
It’s one of the reasons I left clinical medicine. Can’t let the mistakes go.
Anonymous
Greiving? You must mean over the impending malpractice suits that are sure to follow afterwards. It is relatively apparent, given the general unwillingness of the physician patriarchy to show even the most minor modiucm of responsibility when it comes to patient safety, that patients mean very little outside of what they or their insurance companies can be raped for in order to finance the physician 90210 liftstyles.
Anonymous
Anon 1:09,
You must be the Al Quaeda moron who’s posted elsewhere on this blog. Your above comments are to inane and way too stupid to even discuss other than to say that, by calling it a physician “patriarchy”, you’ve divorced yourself from reality by eliminating half the doctors in this county from your ridiculous diatribe. Did you forget there are women doctors, you idiot?
Anonymous
Deal with it MegaDirtbag. You and your ilk have a bit of difficulty with those that do not follow the path of physician idolatry. Caring for patients? What a freaking riot. This coming from a group of purported do no harmers that has attained monopoly position as the head of the healthcare beast in this country and has used this monopoly power to enrich themselves to the envy of the robber barons while at the same time fighting tooth and nail against any and all legal measures that would give patients full access to the legal and disciplinary records of the providers concomittant with attempting to absolve themselves of legal responsbility for their acts of malpractice. One can only hope that the time comes when the idiot medical worshipping ovine populace comes to its senses, as in the situation with the Catholic priests, and absolves itself of its false idolatry. As far as patriarchy goes… Read a history book on the caste structure of the Old Roman Empire you twit.
Grieving? Caring about patients? What a laugh. If you want to show caring then pull the plug upon the malpractitioners in your community (the proverbial 5% that committ the vast majority of the malpractice).
As far as terrorism goes – Look at the recent AMA advertisement campaign that threatens seniors unless they, as proxy, badger their legislators to continue funding the 90210 medical lifestyle.
Anonymous
This guy is a physician trying to get off on riling us up. His comments have too much medical knowledge in them for him to even be a human piece of shit lawyer.
Anonymous
False idolatry, blah, blah blah. . .
Anon 1:09, you are the last person to be calling anyone a MegaDirtbag, with your rambling word-choked diatribes. Your name-calling style and laughably unpersuasive attempts smearing the whole medical profession undo any positive ideas you might have. Who has the time to listen to all that? Who would want to? There is something personal driving this stuff out of you, and it makes you look not just irrational, but a little crazy. Is that what you want?
Anonymous
There is little that I can do with my commentary that even comes close to exacting the level of damage on the medical profession that the current lot of practitioners are doing with their actions. Whether it be whoring themselves out to the lawyers on junk science PI/Med Mal/Toxic Tort cases, abandoning existing patients secondary to purely financial motivations, failing to discipline the incompetents amongst their ranks, fighting each and every measure that would hold practitioners responsible for their mistakes, fighting each and every measure that would allow patients to have full and unfettered access to disciplinary records and malpractice suits (on a national level), suppressing the domestic supply of providers in order to continue with their unjust enrichment, playing politics to take more tax-payer dollars to enrich themselves or wasting the few slots available for domestic training in order to become saline bag stuffers for the vainglorious while millions go without access to even the most basic primary care services… One can only hope that the day comes when the current crop is placed next to the molesting priests in terms of respect afforded by the ovine populace.
Anonymous
Ah at last, what diatribe can finish without that final tip of the hat to pedophile priests and the “ovine” populace. Yes anon, you’ll set ‘em straight. Someone turn down an application of yours somewhere and you haven’t quite gotten over the sting of rejection? Why the persistent ranting about conspiracies of the AMA to limit the numbers of providers trained here. (Were you not successful in an overseas application, too?) Have you forgotten about the huge numbers of OMGs licensed to practice here? Let’s not cause confusion with facts to the contrary, right? Oh yes, the omnipotent AMA LCME, the all-seeing-eye, the nefarious global puppet-masters that they are. Now they are running Homeland Security, deciding who gets J1 visas.
Yes, and let’s not forget those secretive disciplinary records, if only everyone could have a look at them, then the truth would out, wouldn’t it? Probably not, but that is what you evidently think. I guess I’ll have to settle for the public newsletter announcing the disciplinary actions that I get every quarter, the one that is also available online. Unfettered access for everything, even for the lawsuits that are public record anyway. What’ll it be, one of those electronic billboards for the morning commuters, flashed between the Smirnoff ad and the BCBS ad? Sounds like a plan.
Unjust enrichment? Well. Komrade, I’m all ears for your plans to inject justice here–your version, anyway. Do ya think you can come up with one of them five-year plans? After that, you can cut loose on agricultural production.
Hey, I hope you don’t take yourself any more seriously than I do. I’d hate to think only one of us is ending the workday with a smile.
Okulus
Anonymous
Well, champ, I take myself quite seriously. Perhaps the enaction of certain legislative measures to break the back of the current medical monopoly would convince you to do the same. Hitting the sheep in their pocketbooks when it comes to having to pay multi-thousand dollar per hour surgeon fees is a start. The trend of lack of access to basic healthcare services, demands from the provider class to soak the taxpayers to pay exorbitant clinician fees and the continued exhibition of the 90210 lifestyle will only increase legislative pressure to mitigate the problems of the current system. After all, what hard working taxpayer wishes to pay more taxes to further enrich the douchebag Dr. 90210 types so that they can add another Porsche or Ferrari to their collection?
I will, however, tell you what is funny: Providers whining about lawyers and the legal system when they find themselves as defendants while having no qualms about whoring themselves out to the same attorneys when it comes to PI/Toxic Tort/Med Mal cases. It is just absolutely amusing how there is a very strong correlation between the role of the provider as a profiteer vs. defendant and the ranting associated with the evils of the legal profession. Think about this the next time you place the words “post-traumatic” in front of that junk science whiplash or fibromyalgia diagnosis secondary to solely the statement of the coniving dirtbag patient(aka plaintiff)when they claim (operative word here) injury from an auto accident. The irony of relying on the word of a litigant (patient) regarding “clinical causation” in PI cases while disavowing the veracity of the same litigant in med mal cases is just amusing. Apparently, the word “science” is missing when it comes to clinical cause attribution.
The power of the AMA from the lobbying perspective is unrivaled in the modern day political environment. As far as the CME goes… can you name a single medical school in this country that is under current operation without the approval of the CME (one of the organs of monopoly control of the nefarious AMA)? As far as foreign trained clinicians with initial foreign citizenship go… If there are enough providers being produced domestically then there would be no justification for allowing the immigration of any foreign trained clinician. The pressence of these foreign trained physicians supports the position that there are not enough providers being trained. Unfortunately, it does not appear as if enough foreign trained providers are being imported to generate any real competition in the clinical field to even place a dent in monopoly generated compensation rates of providers.
When it comes to availabity of clinical disciplinary records… Has the AMA dropped their opposition to the establishment of a national database that is open to the public such that even the quasi-informed ovine can determine if their provider is a border hopper (loss of licensure in one state and hopping to the next to committ more malpractice)? Has the AMA also dropped its opposition to the inclusion of medical malpractice litigation outcomes along with the disciplinary records? I think not. Patients be damned as the profession only serves to protect its own.
BTW, “komrade,” my solution to the problem of unjust provider enrichment would be to remove the domestic supply caps and allow the outsourcing of procedures such as radiological interpretation (along the lines of IT outsourcing) such that some modicum of capitalist competition could be generated.
Anonymous
You are beyond help. Please report for immediate deportation to Gitmo. I am sure you will feel right at home with others of similar belief.
Anonymous
Factoid of the day: less than 20% of all practicing doctors are members of the AMA, yet this fool claims the AMA is the largest most successful lobbying organization in the country.
Find another bogeyman idiot.
Anonymous
Don Quixote has some major competition from this nutcase.
Anonymous
AS for the patients reading this board assuming physicians don’t care, it is because we have been told over and over on this board by physicians that you don’t care.
My goodness, there is one of you that calls us every thing from human pieces of shit, to whores to assholes. He says how he gets off telling patients they are going to die. How can you then question what we think about your caring natures?
Maybe you doc’s think what he does is funny, I think he is barbaric. And yes, his attitude does make me question doctors in general in a way I never had before.
Anonymous
He’s smoking crack.
Anonymous
“Well, champ, I take myself quite seriously.”
Was afraid so. Well, enjoy being a laughingstock.
Anonymous
“And yes, his attitude does make me question doctors in general in a way I never had before.”
Certainly your right.
Do you also judge football players by OJ?
Do you judge religous men by Khomeni?
Do you judge businessman by Kenneth Lay?
The guy’s (if he is a doc) is an ignorant jerk who needs to find another profession for his an his patient’s sake. If your atitude can be that easily changed, than you are ignorant too.
PS: Doctor hater above is no better.
Anonymous
I am afraid I just don’t recognize myself or most of my associates in the descriptions here. I am a gyn, former ob/gyn. 25% of my practice is for free. I drive a 95 cherokee with a broken rear wiper arm. I have been sued four times, two dismissed with prejudice, one loss, one settled. I quit ob because I didnt like the certainty of getting sued for a bad baby. I do grieve for my patients who have problems and do my best to help them. I have bought medicine for some from my own pocket and get pissed off when they would rather buy cigarettes than pay their medical bills. Even the $3 copay. I have testified aginst doctors in lawsuits I thought were merited and I dont think I am an anomaly.
Anonymous
Please keep in mind due to the anonymous nature of most of the people posting here that it is not safe to conclude anybody is a doctor. That said, there are members of any profession who may act unprofessionally. Good luck getting rid of them. This goes for all professions.
Anonymous
I am not the Anon you are asking the questions of, but will tell you my opinion.
Do you also judge football players by OJ? No, but I do judge the the wisdom of jurors by the verdict and the integrity of defense attorneys who knowingly abetted a murderer’s freedom for the money and ego gratification.
Do you judge religous men by Khomeni? No, by Jim Bakkar and Oral Roberts.
Do you judge businessman by Kenneth Lay? No, by Martha Stewart and Leona Helmsly.
Anonymous
“The power of the AMA from the lobbying perspective is unrivaled in the modern day political environment. “
No, that would be the ATLA, the bribery committee that represents the Human Pieces of Shit.
Anonymous
The ATLA? The same group that pays doctors to whore themselves out by either speculating wildly or blatently lying when it comes to “clinical causation testimony?” The ATLA is powerful but is nothing compared to the AMA. The ATLA could not stop “tort reform” (aka special protections for clinicians only during the course and scope of their business practice) in multiple jurisdictions nor could the ATLA limit competition in places such as CA where there a number of non-ABA (CA only) accredited schools.
For every bullshit John Edwards cerebral palsy case or every bullshit whiplash TMJ dysfunction or TBI case, there is a whore practitioner willing to sell their soul for a few bucks.
Anonymous
“I have testified aginst doctors in lawsuits I thought were merited and I dont think I am an anomaly.”
If you’re testifying against doctors and you’re a doctor, you’re quite an anomaly. Few of your brethren have your courage.
Anonymous
“If you’re testifying against doctors and you’re a doctor, you’re quite an anomaly. Few of your brethren have your courage.”
I would suck Dick if the price is right. I just won’t make stuff up depending on who is paying me. Does that mean I have the courage?
Anonymous
“The ATLA could not stop “tort reform”
They were pretty good at stopping it in Democratic states where they paid off the Democratic senators who voted it down. (I don’t give a shit about politics, It’s just that the ATLA pays off democrats more then republicans)
Anonymous
It is a two way street with the Dems. They don’t support tort reform but they are happy to raise taxes in order to give more money to the providers. Also, let us not forget the “model State” when it comes to caps on damage awards – The good ol People’s Republic of Kalifornia – Ultraliberal but with a 250K pain and suffering award on Med-Mal cases.
Anonymous
“I would suck Dick if the price is right. I just won’t make stuff up depending on who is paying me. Does that mean I have the courage?”
I guess it depends on whether you are male or female!
Anonymous
Kevin,
Don’t you think you should be editing some of this language? It’s cheapening the character of your blog and your purpose of sharing information professionally.
I’m dissapointed….
Anonymous
Kevin, your blog is changing and not for the best… please edit the comments posted, they also directly or indirectly reflect on you as a doctor.
Okulus
Kevin isn’t writing the coarse posts you find so offensive. Why imply that he is responsible for their content when that obviously isn’t true? Just don’t pay attention to the idiot remarks. Is that so difficult to do?
Anonymous
Fibromyalgia IS A BS DIAGNOSIS. it’s the wasbasket diagnosis doctors love to give out because in many cases they lack the smarts to figure out what’s REALLY GOING ON with their sick patients. Only morons except “fibromyalgia” as a real diagnosis, many times it’s lyme disease, subclinical and overt hypothyroidism,etc. the insurance companies love “fibromyalgia” because it means you got a diagnosis code, party over, no need to find the underlying cause. the group of moron scientists/insurance co. executives who came up with this convenient “fibromyagia” pass-the-patient-through-the-system-diagnosis should be jailed for cruelty and stupidity. anyone getting this diagnosis, needs to go to a doctor (good luck, by the way) who is not into placing convenient labels on patients but rather finding out your individual cause of illness. everyone is uniques and we all get sick for different reasons and many different causes can deliver the same symptoms. don’t be a victim of being “fibromyalgized”, find out what is really making you sick!

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