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Practice of Medicine is embedded with hardship and
complications. A Medical Care Provider, whether an Internist or
Gynecologist, a Nurse or a Psychologist, a Dentist, or a
Surgeon has gone through goal oriented training to be
a diagnostician. We are trained to think black and white,
deal with urgencies and emergencies, consider differential
diagnosis, and put the health and well being of our patients
superior to anything else in our lives. The Medical and Nursing
books have chapters about "approach to patient with each Diagnosis"
"ethics and bedside manner for treatments and ethiologies" "how to
handle life threatening urgencies and circumstances". Unfortunately,
our life has become very complicated by legal and political issues
that are not dissociable from our lives. We have to live like
everyone else and we have to follow the law like any other citizen.
We have to hire and fire workers, get in to the contracts, buy and
sell, get married and dissolve our affairs, socialize and mingle
with others, and worse of all deal with financial and political
difficulties of practice of Medicine. We must constantly keep
up with the latest changes of our field and learn new procedures to
maintain our professional abilities and yet, we have to receive
letters and complaints from Lawyers, Accountants, divorce
attorneys, Medical and Nursing Board agents, Medicare and Medical
Investigators, Health Insurance Companies, Hospital Peer Review
Committees and our partners, Real Estate agents, members of families
of patients. To make it short, we cannot be a Doctor or Nurse
without contamination with legal altercations. Our legal issues have
Medical smell, is medically oriented and it may not be handled
without consideration of the most important fact that WE ARE MEDICAL
PEOPLE. We are trained differently, think different, and feel odd to
discuss our Medically tainted legal issues with a Lawyer who does
not understand us; it feels like we are talking to an alien (one
doctor said), I feel strange telling my lawyer about how
laparoscopic procedure has different stages and Medicare billing
must be according to different steps of procedure like removal of
adhesions or using laser (a gynecologist said), I cannot tell
this Lawyer that I cannot do whatever the patient expects me to
do as a Nurse and give her whatever medication she asks for (a Nurse
cited). That is why your Lawyer must be medically oriented to
talk to you like a professional person and know all aspects of
Medical Life. A Double Board Certified Physician practicing Medicine
and Law may be the best when you are used and abused by legal
altercations.
CALIFORNIA MEDICAL BOARD AND OCTUPLET
BIRTH
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Medical Board of California is
investigating whether there were any violations by a fertility
doctor who helped a woman become pregnant with the octuplets born
last month.
Board spokeswoman
Candis Cohen says the board will determine whether there was a
violation of medical standards. The board has not identified who is
under investigation or where the fertility treatment was
performed
The probe was first
reported by the Whittier Daily News.
Nadya Suleman of
Whittier gave birth to six boys and two girls on Jan. 26. The
33-year-old single mother has six other children. In an upcoming TV
interview, NBC reports the mother says all her children were born
through in-vitro fertilization by the same
specialist.
POT
RAIDS
Drug Enforcement
Administration agents
this week raided four medical marijuana shops in California,
contrary to President Obama's campaign promises to stop the
raids.
DEA Acting
Administrator Michele Leonhart
The White House said it
expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr. Obama nominates someone
to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration
holdovers.
“The president believes that
federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and
as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks
of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies
with that in mind," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro
said.
SSRI AND BIRTH
DEFECT
Sacramento,
CA: In early February the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
announced that it would review a lengthy list of drugs for potential
safety problems. Selective Serotonin Receptor Antagonist (SSRI)
antidepressants are on that list. Specifically, the agency said they
would be evaluating the risk of SSRI birth defects. SSRIs
are widely used in the US and many women who become pregnant while
taking an antidepressant are advised by their physicians to remain
on their medication. Some reports even indicate that the benefits of
staying on medication outweigh the risks associated with untreated
depression and post partum depression. There are likely many women
who would disagree with this advice.
Sarah is one of those
women. Sarah took Paxil while she was pregnant, and she believes her
son is paying the price.
Sarah remembers that her son began
throwing up from the minute he was born. The doctors told her that
was normal, but that didn't explain why her newborn son appeared to
have a pinched esophagus tube. He underwent many x-rays to try and
determine what was wrong, but Sarah was never provided with an
adequate explanation.
When she brought her son home she
remembers that he would cry a lot, because he had stomach cramps and
she wondered if this was normal. She suspected that given his
medical history so far, it probably wasn't. She never did find
out.
Now, Sarah's son is 6 and he is very hyper. He has
difficulty sitting still, focusing. Could the SSRI she took while
she was pregnant have impacted her son's health? The trouble is she
doesn't know.
The FDA has listed SSRIs and birth defects as
an area of concern; does that mean answers could be forthcoming? Not
necessarily. The agency cautioned that it had not drawn any
conclusions in drawing up the list and said that "The appearance of
a drug on this list does not mean that the FDA has concluded that
the drug has the listed risk. It means that FDA has identified a
potential safety issue, but does not mean that FDA has identified a
causal relationship between the drug and the listed
risk."
AVANDIA CRITICS
Beaumont, TX: The
question many people are asking as more lawsuits are filed against
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) regarding Avandia heart attacks is,
how much did GSK know about the risks associated with its drug?
Avandia side effects have proven to be very serious for many
patients who took the diabetes drug—more serious than those patients
ever expected. As reports of liver failure, heart attacks and
bone fractures increase, so too do the calls for an
Avandia recall.
Contact: DOCTOR@LAWPRN.COM
310.804.5225
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