It was just an average busy, stressful day at work, in May 2004, when the deputy sheriff arrived with a summons. I sucked in my breath, signed the receipt and returned to my desk piled high with charts, messages, lab results and forms. I was being sued for medical malpractice.
That was how it started. Eventually I peeked at the text of the complaint, which was riddled with accusations. Apparently, my conduct was “malicious, willful, wanton or reckless,” and I had “negligently, carelessly and without regard” for my patient’s health treated her in such a manner that she had died the previous year.
At night I lay awake going over and over what happened. My patient was a relatively young woman who had developed an aggressive colon cancer; her illness was unexpected, and her course was tragic. I felt that I had treated her as I would wish to be treated.
But now her children, whom I barely knew, were coping with their own complex emotions, which I imagined to be grief, very likely anger and frustration, and perhaps misunderstanding. Filing a malpractice suit somehow addressed this. And now it would hang over all of us for years. It was as if a noxious subtle film had settled all around, making everything vaguely unfamiliar and unpleasant. I had become a little unfamiliar to myself.
The film settled on everything at home and at work. I loved my patients and my practice, but this made me wary and mistrustful of them — and of myself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/health/views/29case.html?th&emc=th
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
