Doctors

How to Protect Yourself from Abusive Doctors

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John A. McDougall, MD, is a physician and nutrition expert who considers himself a leader of public opinion and often finds it necessary to challenge the accepted wisdom of the time. Dr. McDougall produces a newsletter over on his website. In the October 2011, vol. 10, issue 10, edition he writes about “How to Protect Yourself from Abusive Medical Doctors.” http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2011nl/oct/protect.pdf I think the entire article is well worth the read but I will cover some of the more interesting parts here. Dr. McDougall discuses a case where he has a patient named Marsha who has a history of precancerous changes in the tissues lining her uterus known as endometrial hyperplasia. Over 2 years her condition progressed to early stage cancer. Two surgeons whom she consulted with recommended a hysterectomy as the treatment. Dr. McDougall has a telephone consultation with a young Obstetrician/Gynecologist. This doctor … Read more

In Light of the Allegations of Child Sex Abuse at Penn State…

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By now I am sure everyone has at least heard that Joe Paterno has been fired as the head coach of the Penn State college football team due to child sex abuse allegations made against one of his former assistant coaches. As discussed a few times on this blog and as indicated as a potential unfortunate risk of having wisdom teeth extracted there is the possibility of being sexually assaulted while under anesthesia to have wisdom teeth removed. As expanded on and discussed at http://www.teethremoval.com/sexual_assault_under_anesthesia_for_wisdom_teeth_removal.html many of the drugs that dentists and oral surgeons give during the surgery can cause in rare instances sexual hallucinations. This means that it is possible for no repercussions and/or loss of license and/or jail time to occur and it can be difficult to distinguish between dreams and actual molestation in the court of law. In … Read more

Research During Residency for Oral Surgeons?

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Earlier this year over the summer an article appeared in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery discussing the attitudes of program directors and residents toward performing research during residency. I commented on this article here https://blog.teethremoval.com/the-lack-of-importance-of-research-in-oral-and-maxillofacial-surgery-residency-programs/ A new article has appeared in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery written by Dr. James R. Hupp titled Research During Residency – Should it be Mandated? (vol. 69, pages 2685-2687, 2011). In the article is a discussion of research and whether or not it should be performed by oral surgeons in residency. Dr. Hupp discuses his own experience with research work and then questions if the current accreditation standards require all Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery residents to do research. He says: “Now the question becomes, should our standards require all residents to have the opportunity to conduct research and, in my … Read more

Fraud and Abuse in Medicaid Clinics

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I have previously discussed on this blog how students graduating from medical school have an average debt of around $158,000 and the average debt of those graduating from undergraduate college is around $27,000 in the U.S.  In fact, the video called College Conspiracy https://blog.teethremoval.com/college-conspiracy-and-united-states-hyperinflation/ profiles a dentist who is stuck with with high loans from school  (around the 11 minute mark). One quote appearing in this video is “…as soon as you get out of school you are indentured for life.” This figure below showing the inflation cost of college tuition (in blue), medical care (in red), and general inflation (in black) from http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/College.html pretty much tells more of the story. In fact I would argue that college tuition costs and medical costs are correlated with each other and you should be able to calculate some sort of correlation coefficient. An interesting article titled “Our Junior Colleagues … Read more

How to Improve Your Chances to Win a Dental Malpractice Lawsuit

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Tom over at OralAnswers has previously written a post on how to win a dental malpractice suit http://www.oralanswers.com/2010/07/sue-your-dentist-and-win-malpractice-lawsuit/ I also discuss on my U.S. Legal System and Medical Malpractice page http://www.teethremoval.com/legal_system_medical_malpractice the 4 elements you must prove to have a chance at winning a malpractice suit. (1) the doctor to provide a standard of care to patients in the locality where the treatment occured (legal duty) (2) the doctor breached that standard of care (3) an injury causing damages (4) the breach of the standard of care was the proximate cause of the injury. Now as is quite clear on my site I disagree with the current ‘standard of care’ of removing healthy wisdom teeth in young healthy patients in the U.S. This is not the standard of care in the U.K. I wanted to touch on an additional element in … Read more