20 Groups File Amicus Brief for Physician Whistleblower
Many of our readers (and certainly those who attended Whistleblower Week in Washington 2008) may have heard about the case of Dr. Gil Mileikowsky. Dr. Mileikowsky is a California Obstetrician who, in 2000, began blowing the whistle on some very disturbing issues at a hospital that was operated by Tenet Healthcare. Among other things, Dr. Mileikowsky, who has been practicing in the US since 1979, reported negligence by his coworkers and a lack of willingness by the hospital to investigate medical errors. Because of these reports, he suffered unrelenting retaliation, and has been stripped of his clinical priveleges. (for more information on Dr. Mileikowsky, see his homepage and the Alliance for Patient Safety website, which details his struggle).
Dr. Mileikowsky has filed suit against HCA and Tenet Healthcare, and the case is currently being appealed in the Supreme Court of California. 20 Public Interest Groups, including the National Whistleblower Center, have signed on to an Amicus Curaie brief in support of this brave physician.
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I currently have a superior court Whistleblower suit against my employer for retaliation after I reported my RN supervisor improperly administering the Hepatitis B vaccine to many students over several years. My legal bills are bankrupting me, and my employer is attempting to fire me by lodging false allegations against me. Even though I was obligated by RI state law to report her wrongdoing to the Dept of Health, there is no real protection for me. It is impossible to protect the public against this type of negligence, they are ruining my career.
I am only beginning to scratch the surface of the cover-ups in medical facilities. I am a toxicologist (a degree in this discipline) who gave up much to take a specimen processing clerk job, while considering a direct entry MSN program, at a west TN medical lab (in a mid-size city about halfway between Memphis and Nashville) only to become a whistleblower in my current job. I have written practically a bookful of letters about the things that occur at work since last summer and now am finding retaliation from management, age discrimination, literal defamation of character, physical threats,and being shunned to just be the beginnings of life in "you know where" due to my concerns about patient specimen sabotage, drug and alcohol use on the job, etc. I am considering,as a middle aged woman, returning to a previous career of teaching chemistry while I pursue a law degree and possibly an MPH. Good health care employees are hard to find and even more difficult to keep. In west TN, nepotism and cronyism take significant precedence over education and professional training any day. Many a good doctor and nurse as well as lab personnel have been driven away and at 11 months, I am the person with the most seniority on my shift and I have been told that I have stayed the longest of anyone not related to one of the higher ups (one lab manager only has a GED, seriously). Even many good employees (there is high turnover almost everywhere)take their own families to Vanderbilt or Memphis rather than their own worplace due to ineptitude and substance abuse by some employees.
I'm an RN who has worked in hospitals coast to coast for thirty years, mostly in critical care. I have been fired from several hospitals for trying to discuss safety issues with administrators. Any nurse who lets on she sees the rampant safety problems is a threat to them because she is a risk of publicity, and bad publicity is the only thing they care about. Patients hurt or killed by errors don't make the hospitals' insurance rates go up. Their decisions are motivated only by the bottom line, not quality or safety. For every error that is reported, there are a dozen that are hushed up. I never had the resources to legally fight over a job, I just moved on and that is why I have no retirement benefits after working thirty years.