blog.bioethics.net

Whistleblowers Everywhere Breathe A Sigh of Relief

Texas nurse Anne Mitchell has won a victory for whistleblowers everywhere after being sued under Texas law for reporting the physician she worked for as being malpracticable using confidential information.

He said that she had ruined his reputation, that she was malicious and had inappropriately used records to which she had access. I mean, how dare she? She's a nurse! What is she doing looking through those medical records?

Apparently this doctor wouldn't know a lot about medical ethics and records. He had previously been dinged by the Texas Medical Board in 2007 for $1,000 and "continuing medical education in the area of ethics, medical records and the treatment of obesity."

Mitchell in her letter had claimed a set of 6 additional, more recent violations. She reported his performing a skin graft, other minor surgical procedures and prescribing herbal medications that the doctor sold on the side.

To boot, he has searched her computer to find her anonymous letter and he fired her after her found it.

Ultimately, if you are a physician working at a weight-loss clinic, do you really need to be performing skin grafts? But more than that, if you have already been fined by the Texas Medical Board and have been told you are not qualified to oversee a physician assistants or nurse practitioners and to get ethics training, you'd better be on your best behavior.

Whether this nurse was an "upstart" isn't the point. Neither is whether nurses generally are saints. This case should never have become the referendum on nurses and whistleblowers it was.

This doctor just seemed to be, and has been for sometime, a not very good one--and the fact that someone had the guts to point it out should be applauded. Thank goodness the Texas courts had the good sense to protect this woman regardless of whether she was a nurse or a good person or anything else. Her right, and everyone else's, to protect patients from quackery has prevailed.

Summer Johnson, PhD