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A Virginia man was awarded $500,000 from a lawsuit after he recorded his doctors and nurses talking shit about him while he was under the knife.
The man, whose name hasn’t been released, was recording his doctors so he could review the care instructions they provided to him. What he wasn’t planning on doing was recording his entire surgery, which included some not-so-nice commentary from the medical professionals that had his life in their hands.
From the Washington Post:
But as soon as he pressed play on his way home, he was shocked out of his anesthesia-induced stupor: He found that he had recorded the entire examination and that the surgical team had mocked and insulted him as soon as he drifted off to sleep.
In addition to their vicious commentary, the doctors discussed avoiding the man after the colonoscopy, instructing an assistant to lie to him, and then placed a false diagnosis on his chart.
“After five minutes of talking to you in pre-op,” the anesthesiologist told the sedated patient, “I wanted to punch you in the face and man you up a little bit,” she was recorded saying.
When a medical assistant noted the man had a rash, the anesthesiologist warned her not to touch it, saying she might get “some syphilis on your arm or something,” then added, “It’s probably tuberculosis in the penis, so you’ll be all right.”
When the assistant noted that the man reported getting queasy when watching a needle placed in his arm, the anesthesiologist remarked on the recording, “Well, why are you looking then, retard?”
There was much more. So the man sued the two doctors and their practices for defamation and medical malpractice and, last week, after a three-day trial, a Fairfax County jury ordered the anesthesiologist and her practice to pay him $500,000.
Listen to this cold blooded shit talking:
The precedent is set now. Sign up for as many surgeries as you can and harass your doctors with meaningless quibbles and questions beforehand.
“Um, have you done this before?”
“I’d feel more comfortable if you explained each portion of the surgery to me again.”
“So, how long is this going to take?”
Right before you go under, hit record. Hopefully some of the inevitable nasty comments flying your way from the doc will pay off those overwhelming car and home loans you’re worried about.
Foolproof strategy. Must test it out..
[via Washington Post]
Image via YouTube
Respond
To be fair I think the main reason of the payout was the malpractice issue of putting down symptoms (false diagnosis) that he didn’t have, and going out of their way to avoid standard follow up. Not necessarily cranky doctors.
$500k defamation ruling for getting your feelings hurt? Give me a break. With the amount of stress these doctors are under during their exorbitantly long hours you can’t expect them to be robots the entire time. They need to let out some steam just like everybody else. Defamation involves damaging the character of somebody, but literally nobody would have known about this had this dude not blown this whole issue up in the courts.
I think this is more about upholding the professionalism that is expected out of somebody who we are entrusting our health and possibly even lives to. Call me old-fashioned, but if I was having surgery, I would want the surgeons attention on the actual procedure and not talking shit about me.
I agree with you, these doctors are just people like everyone else, and yes, they will occasionally need to let out steam, but that doesn’t make it OK to insult a patient’s health or health concerns while they are in the room. If they were just smart and waited for the patient to leave the clinic and have this conversation in an office, this wouldn’t be an issue.