Support Anne Mitchell

Have you heard about Anne Mitchell?

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/nurse-whistleblower-fingered-doctor-bad-medici...

Anne Mitchell is a nurse in Kermit, TX. She did what a good nurse does. She stood up for her patients. She reported a physician to the medical board. I would hope that any nurse would do the same if she saw what this nurse saw.

This physician sewed a rubber tip onto someone's finger. He did a skin graft on someone in the ER. They don't perform surgeries at his hospital and he does not have surgical priviledges there. And, it was the ER!! The hospital is tiny. Not remotely the place for a skin graft. Rather than send this patient to a place where he could have a skin graft done skillfully and without a HUGE risk of infection and complications, he decided to just do it.

This doctor sells herbal supplements on the side and sends letters to the patients who saw him at the hospital to solicit them to buy his herbal supplements.

All of these things should be punished and would be laughable if people, real people, were not the victims.

However, it turns out that this physician treated the sheriff of Kermit, TX when he had his heart attack and the sheriff likes him. So, when Anne Mitchell complained about this physician to the medical board, the sheriff investigated and charged her. She is now at risk of going to prison for up to 10 years!!

If you are wondering, as I was, what she could possibly be found guilty of, the answer is that she is charged with using confidential information for a nongovernmental purpose to harm the doctor. Reporting a physician who is endangering patients to the medical board is a nongovernmental purpose? So, we should limit the lawsuits, but reporting the physicians is a felony? Am I to assume then, that we are simply to be victims to physicians without ethics? We are to have no possible recourse? Horrible.

So, support Anne Mitchell. And excoriate Dr. (and I use the title loosely) Rolando G Arafiles Jr. The real criminals here are the doctor practicing medicine without common sense and decency and the sheriff using the law to victimize patients and their advocate.