The sad story of a physician who blew the whistle on a hospital for poor patient care. The hospital retaliated by calling him a disruptive physician, effectively crippling his career by reporting him to the National Practitioner Data Bank.
Brian Carty wonders why hospital administrators escape the same amount of scrutiny:
It’s interesting that there are no “disruptive hospital administrator” or “disruptive CEO” guidelines. A CEO may fire a highly competent doctor who is trying to insure quality medical care.
topics: hospital, safety
Related posts:
- How hospitals should deal with disruptive physician behavior
- Can you be too aggressive in silencing disruptive doctors?
- Quality and safety are not the same thing
- Physician assistants in a battle regarding supervision
- The disruptive family
- Should patient satisfaction influence physician compensation?
- JCAHO and why doctors are spending less time with patients
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{ 12 comments }
Kevin this is an old story with many victims that the MSM has largely ignored.
Some doctors are “just” fired (like I was – for standing down threats – to “shut up or else” – and saving a child’s life), but others see their lives and careers destroyed by “Bad Faith Peer Review”.
And you’re right. The playing field is not level. It is virutally impossible for a doctor under seige to fight back.
I did. But I still got screwed – by perjury, contempt and fraud. Not prosecuted or punished to this day.
I read the article. If you needed surgery, would you want him to operate on you immediately after seeing his “tantrum” or rage? So what if he was competent or smart? It didn’t give him a right to mistreat his co-workers by breaking or throwing things in front of them. Had one of his staff got hurt, he could very well be in jail or put the hospital in a major liability lawsuit.
Kevin, This is an old story, but the situation is blooming out even further today. It appears hospital administrators are using the term “disruptive” if hospital managers find errors in narcotics inventories from previous managers, when the pharmacy managers inform Administration they are required by Law to report this to the DEA. Then they fire them to attempt to shut them up. It recently happened here. For reasons you can guess I can not go public with my name.
Whistleblowers never have very good outcomes.
Even in organizations with protections for them it’s never good for a career.
Better to take the harder road and work for change, or vote with your feet.
So, Anon 11:08, it's all about appearances and things that did not happen – as opposed to having some kind of outlet for frustrations associated with impediments to good care?
Indeed Anon 7:24, take it from me (as Obama & company peddle "service" prgrams), when it comes to medicine, whistleblower "protections" in the federal realm are a joke.
Or I should say, a myth.
In terms of "working for change", speaking as someone who has been in those trenches for the better part of a decade, it would be nice if the MSM (now that it is not consumed with an election) to examine/investigate/report on some of these egregious cases (like mine) . . .
. . . i.e. stop sucking up to the powers-that-be. Who knows, they might actually sell some newspapers?
Anon 11:08
Did you read the article about the actual doctor or just the hypothetical one? The hypothetical was held as being wrong. There is nothing in the article about the actual Charleston doctor to suggest any behavior of the sort you describe.
The charge of “disruptive” is a nonspecific one as defined and is virtually impossible to defend against. That makes it in effect a political crime. Like being “reactionary” in soviet societies. It can be used by manipulative authorities in hospitals to establish tyrannical power over all dissent. Once a narcissistic leadership begins using these tactics with success then the search for truth on every committee and in every interaction within the institution is converted into a jockying for power and protection–and that includes in any QA activities.
Specific forms of aggression should be banned and punished: physical assault. Name calling. Overt threats to do harm (other than “threats” to take action through appropriate channels).
“Disruptive” however includes actions which are subjective emotional experiences by the perceiver as much as anything else: “threatening posture” “raised voice” “angry tone of voice” and actions which are sometimes the responsibility of doctors and other hospital personel like breaking rules that don’t fit the specific patient care situation at hand, defying authority when needed for patient care, etc. Not being a “team player” when the team is wrong.
Just one of many ways that the general fascist tendencies of the society are being brought to bear in medicine. Physicians, traditionally the bastion of independent thinking and defiance of authority, must the taught to think and act like corporate zombies like everyone else before health care can be reformed–at least that has long been the belief of those competing for control both in the boardrooms of corporate America and in government.
Health care reform is just a fight over who will be our masters and control the former “doctor-patient” interaction. Either way, they all want us to become obedient slaves.
And when doctor’s have no freedom, neither will patients.
Dismissing anyone without truthfully stating the specific factual grounds — whether it’s dismissing a doctor from his/her practice or terminating a patient from the doctor/patient relationship — should NOT be tolerated. If you condone the latter, you have no right to object to the former. Unfortunately, the lawyers working both sides would rather keep us all lost in a fog of words specifically chosen to communicate nothing. Get rid of the d**n lawyers. Their only function is to foster mistrust and bureaucracy for personal gain.
So the term ‘qui tam provisions’ means nothing anymore?
“If you condone the latter, you have no right to object to the former”
Except for the fact that the patient can just go down to road to see any other physician and is only transiently inconvenienced, is not being put on any black list with other physicians, and is not being slandered publicly and deprived of his opportunity to apply hard long earned skills to help people and make a living. I guess except for that, it is the same thing. Why should one person be inconvenienced for something so minor as his fellow citizen’s freedom to run his own business and practice as he sees fit? Some people are just weird in the value they put on this freedom thing.
Trying taking a “qui tam” to court.
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