Views Vary On Discipline For Doctors

Granted there are many good doctors out there and mistakes can happen. Some medical practitioners however, are downright negligent and consistently so. I call them psychopathic doctors. They are psychopathic in my view because they consistently and knowingly put their patients in harms way, cause harm, and have the cojones to try to shirk responsibility and avoid the consequences. When they do get punished it is often a slap on the wrist compared to the damage they actually cause.

Here an interesting article from the NY times regarding the difficulties of punishing the psychopathic doctor. For the real reason why a brush up on psychopathy may be in order.

Published: January 6, 2001

When the New York State Department of Health said last winter that Dr. Ehud Arbit had operated on the wrong side of a patient's brain, it presented the case as rock solid.

Investigators had interviewed dozens of witnesses at Staten Island University Hospital, where he was chief of neurosurgery, to corroborate the state's findings of various medical misdeeds, officials said. Dr. Arbit had also been accused of making the same error five years ago. The health commissioner, Dr. Antonia Novello, was so sure of her case that she forced the doctor to hand over his license while awaiting a hearing.

But a hearing committee charged with deciding Dr. Arbit's fate saw things differently. It cleared the doctor this week of most of the charges against him, upholding only one serious charge involving a spinal surgery. And though the committee found Dr. Arbit grossly negligent in that case, its penalty -- supervised probation -- stunned and incensed Dr. Novello, who immediately moved to appeal the decision.

How could there be such a disparity between a rare but serious set of allegations by the Department of Health and the ultimate finding of a hearing committee appointed by the commissioner

Read more

This is an old but interesting case because it gets to the heart of the matter regarding really bad medical practice. God forbid you come across some medical malpractice and you try to sort out the mess. Records are always missing or shoddy, usually a sign of a coverup. And if you think it's only in China this occurs think again.

Medical misdeeds are tricky operations

Shanghai Star. 2004-02-12

Before the Spring Festival, an Australian friend called me to say that his medical dispute with a local hospital which had lasted 29 months had finally been resolved.

"The hospital paid me 140,000 yuan (US$16,928) and apologized," Jason told me over the phone.

Exciting news of course, yet my second thought after I hung up forced me to calm down.

It was a hard-won case for Jason and his wife Jane, a Chinese Australian from Shanghai.

The couple had to fly back to Shanghai every two months to fight the dispute which involved the death of Jane's mother in 2001. I had earlier asked how much he had spent on the dispute and Jason, with a shrug, just said: "It's hard to count."

Although he had some Chinese origins, Jason knew little about China but his relentless pursuit to win the dispute has left him with a deep impression of Chinese inefficiency, legal loopholes and bureaucracy.

Almost every time when he came to Shanghai, I would meet him. I also accompanied him to the hospital at the centre of the dispute which was affiliated to Shanghai No. 2 Medical University, to the Shanghai Drug Administration, to the Shanghai Health Bureau, to the university and even to the police.

Jane's mother was hospitalized because of cancer and the couple then found themselves to be the victims of some of the evil tricks in the medical field.

They bought medicine from a drug vendor who was recommended by the chief doctor attending Jane's mother. Actually, such behaviour had been the subject of repeated warnings and has been banned by health authorities.

To make matters worse, they noticed that the medicine bottles for Jane's mother were different from those they bought. It was later discovered that the invoices from the vendor were false. Such strange occurrences convinced the couple that they had purchased fake medicine.

That was not the end of their misfortune. The poor manners and service of the hospital staff annoyed them too. One scene Jason repeatedly mentioned was that when abdominal fluid was being taken from his mother-in-law, the needle fell out of her abdomen onto the bed, and the doctor just reinserted it without taking any disinfection measures.

Jane's mother died a month after entering the hospital. Jane, who used to be a nurse, and who had doubts about the medical treatment, managed to get her mother's files. However, the files were a mess.

Every time, I heard Jason telling about their experiences, I could feel his dismay and I was also ashamed because what he saw was all negative about Shanghai.

In fact, medical disputes are not rare in China and doctors have also been blamed for malpractice in taking red envelopes from patients. Many people may have had similar experiences to Jason.

Yet, Jason might be luckier than them. If Jason had not been an expat, the case may still be unresolved.

The couple's business suffered because of the frequent travel between Australia and Shanghai. When the costs they incurred in pursuing the dispute are taken into account, the amount of compensation is minuscule. How could an ordinary person afford to pay so much to win such an expensive apology?

Jason said Jane was not very satisfied with the result. Although the hospital finally admitted their wrong-doings and punished the doctors concerned, the drug vendor was still nowhere to be found and the investigation into the invoices did not make any progress at all.

I could say nothing and his sigh reminded me of a word used by him - a nightmare.

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