Crime in MedicineRough Draft / Under Construction A normal patient does not expect to be injured intentionally by caregivers. When we care for people, it feels like caring about them. When people care for us, it feels as though they care about us. To outside observers "caring for" appears the same as "caring about" - one of the chief reasons patients trust care givers who cannot be trusted and care givers who cannot be trusted think they can. People become professional caregivers for reasons that often do not include concern for the well-being of patients. Look at how they respond when they injure patients, whether accidentally or intentionally, whether it is done by they themselves or by colleagues. The least a person should be able to expect from healthcare is to not be intentionally injured by the caregivers. A healthcare system that actually had the best interests of its patients at heart would, at the very least, have in place a system to deal with crimes committed by caregivers against patients. Instead they are dismissed as one-offs. It is as though a woman, who had just been raped outside, ran into the police station but was told that rape happens so rarely on the street that they don't do anything about it. A normal patient does not expect to become a victim of crimes in a hospital. A normal patient thinks someone would help the victim. Failing that, a normal patient thinks someone would report the crime. People who work in hospitals believe that about themselves too even though they don't. The do not report crimes and they do not help the victims. They are indoctrinated not to in order to protect themselves from "frivolous" suits and protect careers and reputations. As Aaron laid on the operating table waiting for the operation to begin, just below his right hip stood a nurse right stood a nurse, right where diagrams in medical text books would later show she was supposed to stand for this procedure. It was a story that he would be called upon to repeat time and again. Every time he was required to it became more painful to tell. Every time he made the story shorter. Sometimes it was the same people asking him to repeat it yet again. Finally he decided to write it down, in part so that when people required him to repeat it he could tell them to read it. But also because he now had a larger duty. When you know the building is on fire, you have a duty to warn the occupants. His story needed to be written down so that other patients could see what is wrong with healthcare. But writing it down meant he had to return it to its original length and detail, which felt like having to reach down his own throat to rip out his own esophagus. He once read the account of a farmer who had slipped on his tractor while it was running. He was hanging on between the tractor and the machine it was towing seeing that if he hung on it was going to crush him, but if he let go his legs would get run over and amputated. So with complete clarity he made the decision and let go. Years later he could recount the event with no special emotion attached. But he was not routinely beaten up for it. He was not denied healthcare for his injuries. He did not have doctor after doctor manipulate the record to make it look as though he had no injuries and was evil for trying to make it appear as though he did. Most of the people asking Aaron to repeat his story asked sinister questions. Like when they asked if the surgeon was right or left handed. He said he didn't know. So they asked him to give his best guess. He could only sigh. If he guessed and was wrong, they would beat him up with that. Why would they ask him to guess if they were not trying to set him up for that? Knowing what was going to follow, once again would repeat that he never saw the surgeon's hands. So they asked how he could know the surgeon assaulted him if he couldn't see the surgeon's hands? "Close your eyes. . . . If I kicked you where it counts right now, how would you know?" But, they often said, you were under anesthesia. For the umpteenth time he would repeat, often to people who had been over this before, that he was not. He was fully conscious as he was supposed to be. He was joking with the operating room staff. He was alert enough to follow the conversation and make appropriate jokes that caused laughter. Making jokes requires more clarity of thought than almost any other form of conversation. He was alert and aware and knows what happened. Then why didn't anyone report it? Aaron would want to ask if, when criminals rob banks, they expect the criminals to file reports about it? Are there people anywhere who report the crimes they commit? Haven't you read my study on nurses and reporting? One time he did respond to his insurance company's attorney by telling him to subpoena every nurse at St. Virgin and ask if any of them ever have reported anything to a state board or agency. Collectively they will represent thousands of years of nursing and you can bet money that in that time not one of them has filed such a report. Sometimes Aaron would mutter that we will not have taken the first step on the path to making healthcare safe for patients as long as there is anyone left who asks that question. People in medicine don't report things that don't make them look good. Why would a surgeon intentionally injure a patient? He would wonder how long of a list of reasons they would sit still long enough to hear? This question always was asked as though any answer would be insane. In medicine they believe in their own goodness more than anything else. One time Aaron responded by asking why Xerxes had the water whipped when his bridge was washed away. Why did Xerxes command his soldiers to give the water three hundred lashes and then brand it with red-hot irons while berating it? Was it the fault of the water that a wind whipped it into the waves that washed out his bridge? Why would a surgeon attack a patient? Such behavior is as old as history itself. It wasn't just her groping Aaron that irked the surgeon. Aaron had been funny, even charming, and had gotten more attention from the staff than the surgeon. This surgeon was one of those men who had to be the alpha male. Attention had to revolve around him. People had to see that he was the best, smartest, strongest, most attractive, etc. It is not as though he had no social skills. He was good at hiding his ugliest sides. But if he was not the center of attention and respect, people were punished. At this moment, Aaron was the water under that bridge. He was not the first patient intentionally injured by Sales. He would not be the last. But he would be the one who would try hardest to protect other patients. To Aaron it was clear that he was a victim because no previous victim had done what was necessary to protect him. He felt a duty to protect the next one. Unfortunately, the mechanisms in medicine are set up to protect caregivers from patients, not to protect patients from untrustworthy caregivers. And since he only was a normal patient, he still was under the impression that someone in medicine would help him. He imagined someone in medicine would care about him. Part of the learning curve for injured patients is that the reality is exactly the opposite. Medicine hates its victims. An injured patient is lucky if he or she experiences only the facade of indifference. Poke through that and what explodes back at you is as resolutely hateful and destructive as a person in a civilized society could expect to experience. Later, when searching for answers, he spoke to one of the victims of Dr. James Burt. She asked what had happened to him. He told her. She said, "This was in a Catholic hospital, wasn't it?" It was, but he no notion about how that could be relevant. She said that he was in for more torment and damage than he could imagine. She herself had had to hire body guards. Dr. Burt had conducted operations on patients for a couple of decades without even having a license to operate, and no one in that Catholic hospital reported him or listened to the complaints of his victims. When she started complaining, she received death threats. "Why do you think no other religion on earth is known for protecting pedophiles at the expense of its own children? This is how they operate. And now I cannot even warn people about it without getting sued. I had to sign papers saying I would never discuss my case. So I'm discussing only yours. From what you've said it sounds like you still can discuss yours, can't you?" "I think so." "Good luck with that. We've been stopped. You will too."
There was the urologic surgeon who, when he asked how Aaron got injured and was told, visibly and purposely looked at Aaron with disdain and disbelief. "And why would a surgeon do that?" Being told only increased his disdain and his purposely shown disbelief and the specific questions that followed could lead only to foregone conclusions of disbelief and disdain. Years later Aaron would want to go back to him and say, "Shame on you. Shame, shame, shame on you. For treating a patient like that when he came only for help. You weren't the first place he went for help. So he arrived feeling as though it was the third day without sleep during an interrogation by errant cops beating him with phone books and demanding answers that were different than what was true. The patient was too tired and defeated to survive the onslaught of the medical profession's refusals and barriers even to try. Shame on you for marching in lockstep with a community that has no interest, not even a vestige of an interest, in helping patients who have been injured in medicine, but only an interest in protecting those who injured the patients. Shame on you. Shame on your entire community."
Under Construction
Instead of reliable narration the medical community nurtures cognitive acrobatics. massaging truth to come out looking good.
Note: Patients think someone is watching out for them.
Places, events, and situations in this story are purely
fictional. |
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