How Not to Manage Doctors
This is how bad things have gotten for doctors, albeit this example is from the UK. Lucy Letby, a nurse, had murdered at least seven babies and the doctors knew it. Senior doctors had warned for months that Letby was the only staff member present during the time of the deaths. She was not removed from the ward until early July 2016, a year after a doctor first alerted a hospital executive to a potential link. A year! But here is the worst part.
According to two consultant paediatricians, in July 2016 a hospital executive said contacting the police would damage the hospital’s reputation and turn the neonatal unit into a crime scene, after one senior doctor recommended bringing in criminal investigators.
Another executive, Tony Chambers, then the hospital’s chief executive, instructed senior doctors to write a letter of apology to Letby on 26 January 2017 for repeatedly raising concerns about her. The apology was ordered on the basis of two external reviews, which executives felt exonerated Letby. However, neither review was designed to examine whether she, or any other member of staff, was responsible for the deaths and both recommended that several deaths be investigated further.
Forced to apologize to a murderer in the name of political correctness. That’s how little they think of doctors nowadays. There has to be a chain of command or hierarchy in medicine or else the system breaks apart.
What do you think?
I recall that in the classic summer flick JAWS, the town elders wanted to play down the shark attacks as bad for tourism. However, nobody would have believed a plot line of the punishment of the experts by writing an apology letter to the shark. Reality outstrips fantasy once more.