[Maria]

Personally I've always gone thru the chain of command when reporting an incident of any kind involving healthcare personnel at any level/any position. I think I'e only made one report of a physician to the Board of Medicine in all my years of practice. He was eventually let go from the Managed Healthcare company we worked at altho he had a number of reports made with regard to his behavior towards patients and patients reporting his behavior to the CEO of the company.

I've definately seen all kinds of things in the years I worked in healthcare and some of it not so kosher however anyone I know that I worked with used the chain of command in terms of reporting incidents and sometimes people lost their jobs but I've never seen anyone sent to prison for reporting an incident properly. I have heard doctors say they would sue for defamation of character however it's the hospital that has the deepest pockets so that's about as far as I've seen it taken..

Very interesting article indeed. The physician in question seems to have enough on his record already that would make a report such as this nurses seem like nothing more than another report that the physician is practicing medicine that is not within the standards of practice in the community. I wonder if others have seen much of this behavior and chose not to report it or just ignore it altogether. The physician in question seems to have pretty slick legal counsel...