Less important: it’s mean and unprofessional.
More important: It contributes to the dehumanization of the patient, and it fosters a climate in which onlookers & participants come to accept it as “okay.” The dehumanization is allowed to breed and evolve and the potential grows that the docs will begin to actually abuse the patient or begin documenting truly damaging false diagnoses.
And are the customers naked (virtually naked), unconscious, and thus helpless when you do this? Do you have instruments inserted into apertures in their bodies? Are you a member of a profession that takes an oath to do no harm to your customers?
What’s with the oh-so-casual attitude toward this abuse? Where is the commitment to personal integrity? (Making fun of fully clothed customers, who are awake and walking around is not the same as what went on in this story.)
It IS inhumane, whether anyone knows about it or not.
Yup. I was glad to see some people start to post about this as it really surprised me to see that so many think it’s no big deal.
Regarding why his phone was on, in the article I read the man wasn’t able to have anyone with him and wanted to be sure he heard the doctor’s after-care instructions. I can understand this because while I remember the doctor talked to me afterwards, I remember nothing of the conversation. Fortunately I had two people with me who did. I didn’t receive anything in writing.
Doctor’s receive (and should receive) considerable leeway when it comes to misdiagnosis. But the law takes a particularly dim view of intentional misdiagnosis. Of all the bad things that occured in this incident, that is the element that makes the situation legally actionable.
Morally and ethically, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that our doctors take our medical procedures seriously. We are exceptionally vulnerable in the hands of medical professionals. We are often naked or close to it, we are sometimes unconscious, and we are allowing liberties to be taken with our body parts that would be felonious in other circumstances. I think we should be allowed the expectation that we won’t be slandered and ridiculed when we are least able to stand up for ourselves.
That being said, though, I don’t believe the doctor’s nasty comments should be a matter for the courts. But I absolutely feel it should generate a stern disciplinary hearing with penalties attached, by the hospital or other entity employing this doctor.
Does this apply when the remarks are obvious jokes, bad as they are? Could anyone have actually believed that these two schlubs thought the man actually had syphilis or tuberculosis?
This reminds me of when Jerry Fallwell sued Hustler and Larry Flint for publishing a mock ad of Jerry recounting his first sexual experience.
Thank you for saying this. I agree.
They weren’t schlubs. They were trained and licensed in a profession whose members are accorded a significant degree of respect and trust. Of course it’s more than plausible for someone to believe that a doctor is telling the truth when she looks down at the patient she is treating and says he probably has syphilis.
This isn’t much like the Hustler situation at all.
I am rarely in the OR*, but from what I remember of my experiences, personnel did not spend time insulting or thinking of creative ways to get back at the patient for being a PITA. It would however not surprise me to learn that docs/techs/nurses in the OR are known on occasion to make catty remarks about patients, other docs/techs/nurses/hospital administration etc. This tendency will probably be considerably damped down in light of the case cited in the OP.
These days there is more potential than ever to be overheard/recorded. An anesthesiologist should know better than to make such remarks in the presence of a patient receiving relatively light anesthesia, even if the usual effect is to produce amnesia (thankfully, I remember nothing of my two colonoscopies).
And yes, putting a false diagnosis in the chart (even for a “minor” condition) is way over the line.
So my take on the affair was the anesthesiologist was a jerk, not too bright, her comeuppance was semi-hilarious, and incidentally that if endoscopy staff wanted to verbally trash me unmercifully while I was under (but also willing to compensate me a few hundred thousand bucks) I’d probably go for it.
*it is not unknown for pathologists to make cutting remarks about other physicians.
My take on it is that the doctors had a reasonable expectation of privacy with regards to their chatter during the procedure, and that the skills for which they are valued do not include warmth and non-deplorable personalities. In fact, I sort of expect surgeons and anaesthesiologists to be pretty horrid people based on prior experience.
If they’d transferred these comments along with x-rays and test results and chart notes to my primary care doc, I’d want their asses sued, sure. But it’s really only an artifact of an unanticipated recording that allowed these comments to outlive the procedure itself. If it had been me, I’d have started out affronted and outraged but probably been reduced to amusement and eye-rolling at some point. It’s a darkly contemptuous and unfriendly humor but I don’t think it serves any malicious purpose above and beyond amusing the conscious people in the room at the time.
ETA: damn, I missed where they’d actually made a deliberately false chart entry. Never mind. Fuck 'em. Sue their asses.
Actually, they weren’t in private. The defamation claim stood because there were other people in the room.
I wasn’t being entirely serious. But still, there is a funny side to this. I don’t mean the fake haemorrhoids diagnosis, of course. That’s serious malpractice.
Not specifically common, but (1) rude surgeons are not unknown. Around here (AUS) an anesthesiologist who was secure in her job and had enough influence would refuse to work with such a surgeion, so the only anesthesiologist such a surgeon could get would also be second-rate and unprofessional.
(2) harmlessly upsizing a medical result to get more money or to please the patient is also not unknown, and in a regulated environment like AUS or the UK, the authorities fall on you like a ton of bricks when they catch you. In the USA, that’s the function of the courts and damages. But it’s the institutions not the patients who are the primary victoms
Of course, the kind of anesthesiologist caught in a lazy dishonesty like (2) is also the second-rate anesthesiologist who can’t get work except with an asshole like (1).
These people sound like they are difficult to work with, and I wouldn’t like to have them around me. They are an institutional problem, partly because their behavior might, in some circumstance, eventually lead to poor patient outcome. Not like the present example - And if you’re secretly recording your workers so that you can sue them later, you’re creating the circumstances that will, in some cases, lead to poor outcomes, and you deserver censure not reward.
Something else I’m curious about, why did the anesthesiologist make the fake diagnosis? My only guess is because she was in the pre-op and the one struggling with the guy beforehand and possibly putting in the IV (or maybe talked to the nurse that did it). I guess maybe it’s a small enough team that she still goes in afterwards and/or writes the post op report.
Even so, if the doc said ‘ha ha, no, don’t do that’ or reviewed the report before the post-op and took that out, none of this would have happened. The PT’s lawyer probably would have told him he didn’t have a case and that would have been the end of it. If anything, that team would have been referred to the hospital/group’s ethics committee, but that’s probably it. Maybe they would have gotten a slap on the wrist for it.
If the doctor is lucky (but it looks like the case is wrapped up so I doubt it’s the case), he didn’t sign off on the report yet and he could say ‘she did what? I thought she was joking, here’s my final report, see, no mention of internal hemorrhoids’ and he could throw her under the bus if he needed too.
But, if he signed off on the report with the false diagnosis, IMO, he should lose his job, pay out whatever damages the court deems fair and have fun looking for a new line of work.
On top of what the PT got, his health insurance should go after them as well for any additional charges for removing/banding the hemorrhoids that didn’t exist and/or post op care he had to do. But those charges are likely paid by the PT from the settlement.
There was a news story a while back about a surgical nurse that was stealing fentynal from patients being put under anesthesia, and was replacing it with water! AND she was using the same syringe to inject herself, so all the patients were not only potentially in serious pain or not under during surgery, they also were all potentially exposed to whatever diseases she had.
Makes me not want to get surgery done.
Yeah, that confuses me. Why were there people in the room who weren’t part of the staff? I’d expect the doctors nurses, and perhaps some student doctors, but not anyone else. After all, it’s a sort of embarrassing procedure. I’d be more upset if the doctor was bringing in random people to be entertained by my procedure than by her saying something nasty about me during it.
Put me in the “no one could possibly have taken the syphilis comment seriously” camp. That was a joke. A bad joke, in poor taste, but I would be astonished to learn that anyone believed the guy had syphilis. Really NOT defamation, just unprofessional behavior. If I were God, the doctors would get a hand-slap for that, not a liability fine or a job loss.
The false diagnosis is a completely different matter. That’s malpractice. And people who intentionally commit malpractice shouldn’t practice medicine.
Was he secretly recording? Given his explanation for why he was recording, I assumed at least some of the doctors new about it.
HCPs have been doing this for as long as the drugs have existed.
Right now, I’m reading an old book by a now-deceased woman whose father was a physician at the turn of the last century. When her older sister and the sister’s BFF were tweens, their dad caught them huffing chloroform. :eek:
I had my phone with me during a minor heart OP recently. I do actally wish I’d recorded stuff just because it would be nice to have a clearer memory of what happened - I was tripping out on morphine and saw a woman with a poodle that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there. 
There’s nothing wrong with recording your own operation.
Making the occasional comment is one thing, but the level of jokes was totally unprofessional to the point where they may have been distracted from their real work. Makes jokes afterwards while washing up, if you have to.
Pilots are banned fom chit-chatting too much while on duty; this was because the pilots’ chatting was found to be partially the reason for a fatal crash a few years ago. The pilots were also over-tired due to low pay leading to long commutes - anyone remember which crash I’m thinking of? It was from NY, I think.
Unless he later gets other symptoms in that area and thinks, “oh, that’ll just be the internal haemorrhoids,” so doesn’t get help in time.
Plus it’s also just a good principle that you do not falsify records. Next time it could be life-threatening even if it’s not this time.
I’ve heard (on this board) that sometimes salesmen for specific medical appliances have to be in the room to check it’s being used correctly. Maybe it was them.
Actually, although Colgan Air 3407 indeed crashed because of the factors mentioned, the concept of a “sterile cockpit” was already well established before that particular accident.
The ban on chit-chatting comes from way before then. The first time “idle chit-chatting” was considered to be a factor in an accident was in the plane crash that took the lives of the father and two older brothers of Stephen Colbert on September 11, 1974: Eastern Air Lines Flight 212.
Copy-paste of the relevant portion of the link:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia, I know, I know, but there are links to the proper documents in the article]
While investigating this accident, and reviewing the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), the NTSB found that the flight crew engaged in unnecessary and “impertinent” conversation during the approach phase of the flight, discussing subjects “ranging from politics to used cars”.[5] The NTSB concluded that conducting such non-essential chatter can distract pilots from their flying duties during the critical phases of flight, such as instrument approach to landing, and recommended that the FAA establish rules and educate pilots to focus exclusively on flying tasks while operating at low altitudes. The FAA, after more than six years of consideration, finally published the Sterile Cockpit Rule in 1981.[7][8]
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