Sexual abuse and rape
November 21st, 2008Sounds suspicious does it not? But who knows what really went on? One thing is sure, though. Most of us working in health care will say, “Well, nothing like that could ever happen to me.”
Or could it? First, a true story from England. A few years ago, I received an urgent phone call from the pharmacist in the largest of the local supermarkets. A gentleman – we will call him Mr Green - was standing in the supermarket handing out circulars to all who passed by. The circular said that Dr Mary Jones (one of my partners) was an excellent doctor but that every time he went to see her, she asked him to remove his trousers and then tickled his scrotum with her bare hands.
Mary has been in the practice for 15 years, is happily married to an accountant and has two children both at nearby schools. She is well known locally.
That pharmacist arranged for security to get the man to leave the supermarket, but he then stood outside and continued to distribute his circulars. The police arrived and took him home. Mr Green was mentally ill but not sectionable. Mary took advice from her defence union. A stern letter was written and Mr Green stopped handing out circulars. We do not normally remove mentally ill patients from our list but the advice we had, and followed, was that Mr Green should go. We arranged for another local practice, a few miles away, to take him on.
There was no come back from our patients. The allegation was preposterous, Dr Jones is well known and respected, and no one took it seriously. We heard no more about it.
It could have been so different particularly if the allegation had been against a male doctor. “I went to see Dr Crippen with palpations. He insisted I take my bra off and whilst he was pretending to listen to my heart, he felt my breasts” says Mrs Smith. Dr Crippen might well have asked Mrs Smith to take off her bra in order to listen to her heart. Dr Crippen knows full well he should get a chaperone, and always does for vaginal examinations but, well, all the nurses were tied up, and he has known Mrs Smith for years, and there has never been a problem with her, and the examination only takes two minutes and you can go on like this as long as you like, but the seeds have been sewn. And now, another true story, this time from the USA again.
Kevin MD draws my attention to a respected gynaecologist, who refused to prescribe narcotics for a patient and was then accused of a seamy, unpleasant sexual offence.Is this truly an indiscretion by a 61-year old doctor with an unblemished record, or is the patient out for revenge after being refused a narcotic prescription? No matter what happens, the physician has already lost with the story being published in the local newspaper.
Full details from Kevin MD here
Male doctors are particularly at risk. But it is not just doctors. Anyone working in health care may face allegations of this nature. And woe betides you if you fall foul of the feminists. You may be exonerated in court but, even if you win, you lose. There is no easy answer and you cannot be chaperoned for everything.
