19 October 2008
Don't Hire a Drunk or Incompetent.
10/19/08 11:33 Filed in: Medical
Malpractice | Negligence
You
would never hand off the keys to your car to a
drunk or incompetent driver, would you? In fact,
you probably would be disgusted if you saw someone
hand off the keys to their car to a drunk or
incompetent driver in the hope of financial gain.
For example, if Big Rig Trucking gave the keys to a
semi-truck to an incompetent driver, and that
driver tore through a neighborhood and killed or
permanently injured a child, you’d blame Big Rig
Trucking too, wouldn’t you?
The same should go for hospitals who hire, retain or otherwise allow an incompetent surgeon access to the operating room. As patients, we all believe that if a physician has access to a hospital’s highly specialized and tightly controlled surgical facilities that physician holds the necessary skill, training and competence to conduct surgery... to take our very lives into his or her hands. Hospitals act as the gatekeeper to the surgery room. Hospitals must make sure that the individual they allow into their surgery room has the necessary skill and training. If they know or should know that a surgeon lacks competence, and a patient dies or is seriously injured, they will be held accountable for enabling that surgeon to commit medical malpractice. After all, no one would show up if a surgeon told them he’d be doing the operation in his garage, at 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning.
The same should go for hospitals who hire, retain or otherwise allow an incompetent surgeon access to the operating room. As patients, we all believe that if a physician has access to a hospital’s highly specialized and tightly controlled surgical facilities that physician holds the necessary skill, training and competence to conduct surgery... to take our very lives into his or her hands. Hospitals act as the gatekeeper to the surgery room. Hospitals must make sure that the individual they allow into their surgery room has the necessary skill and training. If they know or should know that a surgeon lacks competence, and a patient dies or is seriously injured, they will be held accountable for enabling that surgeon to commit medical malpractice. After all, no one would show up if a surgeon told them he’d be doing the operation in his garage, at 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning.