Full Table of Contents
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Abbreviated
Table of Contents
Home Page
Patient Safety
Silence vs
Safety
Silenced
White wall
of Silence
Silencing
Conflict Of
Interest
Psychology of
Providers
Subjectivity
Blacklisting
Nurse survey
Loyalty
Mobbing and
bullying
Trust Us
Defensive
documenting
Report Rate
Risk
managemnt
SOAP
Management
Hospitals
Crime in
medicine
Sexual Abuse
Liability
Limitations
Free Speech
for Patients
Exploitation
OSMB Medical
Boards
Mammography
solutions
Medical errors
Medical
Complaints
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Links
Injured patients who want to help and be heard, click here.
Thomas Jefferson said that given the choice between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would choose to have newspapers.
In medicine we have government without newspapers. Patients cannot find out what they need to know to make informed choices. No one in medicine records or reports the information patients need to know the most. So patients will have to.
Dr. Alan Zarkin
AKA Dr. Zoro
Medicine in a microcosm
September 7, 1999 at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, in a crowded operating room with people watching as he did it, Dr. Allan Zarkin used a scalpel to carve his initials 3 inches high into his patient, Dr. Liana Gedz, a dentist, after delivering her baby girl by Cesarean section. Do you think anyone cried out for help? Do you think anyone called the police? Do you think anyone filed a report? Do you think anyone even told the patient that she had been injured? In hospitals they learn not to and don't. They even learn routines designed to erase memory of adverse events.
When you remove accountability, you guarantee abuse.
What is the state of patient safety when doctors operate in an environment that leaves them feeling so little inhibition that they judge that they can get away even with violence (carving you initials in someone has to be considered violence)?
The only reason this patient was able to do anything is that this physician signed the deed with his initials and there were witnesses who were not healthcare professionals. Had he restricted himself to injuring her internally he would be suing her for speaking about it. And the state would have no reliable information on the event because people working in medicine report adverse events only 2% of the time and crimes only a small fraction of that.
In checking the New York State summaries of professional misconduct and discipline I find no record of any actions taken regarding Dr. Zarkin. A former patient of his tells me that he voluntarily surrendered his license, which will keep him from practicing medicine for five years, after which time he will be allowed to resume. If there is reason for the authorities to be concerned about his resuming practicing, they won't learn it from anyone in the medical profession.
It
was such an open and shut case, and it received so much publicity, that the hospital finally had to report it. If it hadn't been so open and shut and so widely known, it is unlikely that the hospital itself ever would have learned the details.
They reported it to the Department of Health as “grossly inappropriate behavior.” They did not say what he had done. Another example of the extreme reluctance of anyone in healthcare to report, even when the deed has been signed for all the world to see.