Shakespeare said, kill all the lawyers. I’m going to go a step further and say add doctors to that sentiment.
Now before anyone starts touting the nobility of the profession and how it is only a handful of doctors and HMOs that make the whole system look bad I will remind you that the same is true of lawyers. It’s just that we have degraded into a society that would rather 10 innocent men be incarcerated rather than let a guilty one go free instead of vice versa. Additionally, political cartoonists don’t get the laughs portraying slimy doctors the way they do slimy lawyers because, face it, you don’t want to piss off an individual that might be operating on you at some point. Being sued is fine.
But that’s a different rant all together.
This concerns the ineptness of a particular doctor and how his inaction and lack of care for his work has led to my grandmother being hospitalized with a lot of pain. Apparently the doctor in question not only failed to do his job properly with my grandmother, he had lost enough interest in his work to have his distracted mind affect OTHER PATIENTS. Since he had been a doctor for so long, the group he was attached to let him retire rather than fire him. This means that they not only back what he has done by refusing to discipline him more harshly but they undermine their patients feelings by allowing him to retire as if nothing happened.
Suing him will do very little good if any since he has retired. The best one could hope for was the publicity would ruin him and, as his only concerns now are his golf swing and fishing cast, it would be a moot point to take to the civil courts. Forget criminal charges. He did his job, just not well. Neglect is hard enough to prove without experts getting on the stand and debating just how far up a woman’s vagina a proper sample should be taken. The police have more important things to do.
So I am left only this blog and my meager number of readers to bitch to. I can handle that, eventually, my grandparents, husband, and parents are going to die. I came to terms with that when I was 19 and lost my maternal grandmother and best friend in the world. Why I cannot abide is losing a loved one due to the neglect of others. This was preventable so the outcome is unforgivable. The damn doctor should be prosecuted and his punishment should be based on the number of patients affected by his inaction. He has broken his oath to DO NO HARM or, rather, DO NO FURTHER HARM. Shouldn’t something be done besides giving him a chance to run away from his responsibility?
Please keep my grandma in your thoughts. Thank you.
Posted by gmwood at August 1, 2005 11:31 AM