A doctor who failed a young lady

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What do you think should be done with this doctor, I am thinking that man slaughter charges should be considered. I would consider him on the same level as a bus driver who gets drunk before causing a fatal accident. My reasoning is that if you have special training that teachs you the dangers of something, if you are lazy or choose to be reckless then maybe you should get a harder deal than an ordinary member of the public.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ancer.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/women ... p-job.html

This doctor sucks. If he had identified the cancer the first time she wouldn't have died from complications, so he should be held liable for her death. He should lose his license to practice medicine and spend at minimum 10 years in jail. How he still has a license baffles me.

It is unbelievable to me that a girl would go to her doctor so many times complaining about her symptoms and be sent away without eventually looking for a second opinion. I don't understand how someone could experience her symptoms for so long without asking someone else to take a look before it is too late.

I once went to a specialist to ask about a pain in my groin, and he had me dressed and ready to send on my way when I told him he must not have felt the lump I was complaining about ... and after I had placed his fingers directly on the spot, he quickly pulled them away and began arranging for surgery to remove a swollen lymph gland.

I suspect the doctor the girl had seen is incompetent, but the girl died because she did not seek a second opinion.

That doctor should be fired.

"You're fired!"

Shrug. Incompetent professionals, doctors included, are everywhere. This happens every day, all the time. The difference in this case is that the media picked up the story.

What could we do? The corporate culture is VERY hostile toward questioning other workers' competence. There's no better way to end one's career than to point out the incompetence of your peers. If the peers can't root out the rotten apples, then who can? Answer: no one. These people go on with their "careers", causing incalculable damage.

Sooo many people aren't qualified to work beyond menial jobs, and yet somehow they end up doctors, pilots lawyers, etc...

One word: Malpractice Suit

I'm thinking this is either UK or Australia. And importantly, for the political debates we have recently had in the United States:

In the UK 'socialised' medicine, does a person have a right, on their own initiative, to go to a second doctor if he or she is not satisfied with the first?

That's for sure. This could have been caught easily with a Pap smear done by a gynecologist. Like so many American women, I had a gynecologist the minute I hit adulthood.

He is just beyond incompetent. And she should have been seeing a gynecologist routinely anyway. Or at the very least he should have done a Pap smear every single year regardless of symptoms or not. It's standard procedure for American women. It should be standard procedure for women everywhere.

She shouldn't have needed a second opinion. All women should get routine Pap smears every single year. A routine Pap smear- if he had ever done one- would have caught this when it was still in its early stages.

That's horrible

But I think they may be changing some of the gyno procedures (when/how often women should go) as of a few months ago.

I hope they aren't recommending that it be done less often. I'm on a roll about routine Pap smears because I had abnormal cells caught by one. No symptoms at all. It's really far gone once you actually have symptoms. If I had been in the hands of this Pap-less idiot, I might be dead too. Instead I had a competent doctor who did a routine Pap, caught the abnormal cells and within a very short time I had them removed. It was a beautiful thing.


I hope all the women on the board have had a routine Pap done within the last year!

Let's add the qualifier, American women who have health insurance or other access . . .

Unfortunately, a lot of people in America, both men and women, basically get no preventative care at all.

+10

Barred from practicing, certainly, but I don't see the point in charging him with anything. The man didn't cause the death, he failed to prevent it due to incompetence, locking him up wouldn't benefit society in any way and would cost money. If he was in fact a government doctor I could see the family getting a settlement, but that's about it.

That is not how it works in the UK. You register with a GP and then you stay with that GP until you move out of the area they cover, or in this case, he is removed. Then you can register with another GP. She wanted a second opinion, which is why she asked him to refer her to the hospital to get it. She did not have the option of contacting them directly herself, she had to go through her GP.

No they don't. They are allowed to seek a second opinion only if the GP agrees to it. Most GPs would refer a person to the hospital for that though, if the patient was really worried and requested it. Even if they were sure they were right.