So I guess this means that medical ethics don't mean anything anymore - at least in Texas?

[url=http://]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/us/07nurses.html?partner=rss&emc=rss[/url]

Texas Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor
 
By KEVIN SACK
Published: February 6, 2010

KERMIT, Tex. — It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.

Sheriff Robert L. Roberts Jr., who investigated the case against the nurses, voiced confidence in it.

When she was fingerprinted and photographed at the jail here last June, it felt as if she had entered a parallel universe, albeit one situated in this barren scrap of West Texas oil patch.

“It was surreal,â€

So, the doctor WAS cited multiple times for wrongdoing in his practice (the article stops short of calling it malpractice), yet the nurse is being "vengeful" for reporting this? If the incidents she reported had been found to be within a normal standard of care, I would consider she was being vengeful, but not when the concerns were legitimate and acted upon by oversight agencies.

They seem to basically be trying to charge her with slander. Isn't truth the best defense against slander accusations? Hopefully the judge and jury do what's right and clear her of all charges.

"..Don't trust your soul to no backwoods southern lawyer,
'cause the judge in the town's got bloodstains on his hands..."

They definitely need to make sure the judge and jury are not current or former patients of either the doctor or nurse. If they can't find such people in that small town, then they need to move the trial to a different town. And, while the natural suspicion is to think that having a jury of patients of the doctor might work in his favor, you never know, it could just as easily work against him if they were unhappy with their care.

I hope the nurse has a good lawyer who pays attention to these things and requests a change of venue for the trial if it's one of those one-doctor small towns where you just can't get an unbiased jury who has had no interaction with that doctor (or the nurse). Then again, this sounds like the sort of case that is going to go to a state circuit court in a county seat, not just the local small town courthouse.

And, Chaos, I completely agree that something is really screwed up when a doctor with restrictions on his license is allowed to practice unsupervised in a small town where people are stuck with that doctor or no doctor at all, and then the nurses who are the only other medical professionals around to notice if he is still doing something wrong get blamed when they report him. The medical board certainly needs to reconsider how they handle physicians with prior sanctions and restrictions on their license. They really should NOT be in a solo practice. They should have to get someone else to sign off on everything they do, supervised like a resident.

Basically, the hopital administration 'slapped" the quack's hand, and let him continue in his quackery.  Then they fired the nurses, most likely in an attempt to shut up other nurses who might have given their support to the complaint upon investigation...unfortunately, in many cases where nurses try to report poor practice or poor situations of healthcare (poor staffing for instance) hospital administrations have their ways of shutting up these so called 'discontents"--this is why despite laws supporting the right to collective bargaining there are so few unions operating in hospitals today...those nurses gutsy enough to play by the rules and try to invite unions into hospitals eventually (maybe a year or two later even) find themselves without work...the attempt to form a union being undermined by nurses "afraid"(?) to support the effort...there are nurses today in big city hospitals who work long shifts, working an extra half hour/shift without pay (for their unpaid lunch break) who never take their lunch break and don't get paid for that unpaid half hr. because they are afraid to sign the "worked lunch" memo for fear of incurring their head nurse's wrath...Many hospital administrations are refusing to pay overtime but imposing such a work load that overtime in inevitable...this Texas hospital, in firing the nurses, was precipitous--they should have bided their time like the big city hospitals do and quietly dismissed the nurses further later in time...it would have been harder to prove vindictiveness on their part.  I hope this hospital and all those opposing these nurses get what is coming to them....the small town corruption stinks.  Certainly the sherriff should be impeached for abuse of authority, as should the judge who issued the search warrant for the computer search...it all smells rotten!

It's Texas. Those of you who are trying to make sense of things that happen in that state are just going to frustrate themselves.

Glad to see that not all Texans are brain-dead.

Winkler County Nurse Anne Mitchell is not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty!

Category: Alternative medicine • Medicine • Politics • Quackery
Posted on: February 11, 2010 3:00 PM, by Orac

Well, that didn't take long, at least not once the trial ended.

It's good to see the jury act with such alacrity to find Anne Mitchell not guilty and send a strong message to the hapless Dr. Rolando Arafiles and his errand boy Sheriff Robert L. Roberts, who spent more effort tracking down a nurse doing her duty than I bet he spends tracking down thieves and murderers, as well as the equally clueless County Attorney Scott Tidwell. It's good to see that justice was finally done in the end, but it's absolutely horrifying that it took so many months for it to happen. This is a prosecution that never should have happened, clearly the result of incestuous relationships among some good ol' boys in business together coupled with the utter lack of oversight and spinelessness of the administration of Winkler County Hospital.

I'm guessing that it was pretty clear that Mitchell would be acquitted after this:

    On Wednesday, Anne's attorneys began her defense and called several witnesses to testify. The first was a nurse practitioner who had worked at the Winkler County Rural Health Clinic and left because of her concerns that issues relating to the care provided by Dr. Arafiles had not been addressed. She had also filed a complaint against Dr. Arafiles with the TMB at the same time as Anne and Vicki (all worked together). The NP testified that she has subsequently filed a second complaint. She testified that Anne was motivated only by her concern for patients. The second witness was an LVN, who testified about her concerns regarding Dr. Arafiles' work at the clinic. She also left because of those concerns and the stress they were causing her. The Defense called the Winkler County judge (not the trial judge) testified that she knew Anne and Anne had discussed her concerns about Dr. Arafiles. The judge said Anne's motive was patient concern. Lolly Lockhart, RN, testified as an expert witness on a nurse's duty. Dr. Pham, Chief of Staff at Winkler County Memorial Hospital, testified about concerns about Dr. Arafiles' care. He also testified that Anne was concerned about patient care and that Anne is a good nurse.

    Thursday morning, the defense called a medical expert, who testified that he had reviewed the five cases cited in the complaint to TMB and found substandard care. The Defense has rested. Next, the charge will be read to the jury, the Prosecution and Defense will give their closing arguments, and the jury will begin deliberation.

As I said, this was an open-and-shut case that should never have made it to a jury, and the rapidity with which the jury ruled only serves to emphasize that point. I can only hope that the civil lawsuit brought against Winkler County Hospital, Sheriff Roberts, Dr. Arafiles, and County Attorney Tidwell goes forward and teaches these good ol' boys a lesson about abuse of public trust, failure to discipline bad doctors, and trying to punish a nurse for doing her duty in reporting questionable care delivered by the doctors that oversee her. Anne Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle lost their jobs, their livelihood, a whole lot of money, and Mitchell lived for months in fear of going to jail for up to ten years because of Tidwell's malicious, unethical, and possibly illegal prosecution. The hospital and the public officials who so egregiously abused their public trust need to pay.

The hospital and the public officials who so egregiously abused their public trust need to pay.

They also need to be tossed out on their arses.