AUSTIN — Texas medical regulators on Friday placed on probation a West Texas doctor involved in the unsuccessful prosecution of two nurses who complained anonymously that the physician was unethical and risking patients’ health.
The Texas Medical Board technically suspended Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr. but allowed him to continue to practice medicine while on probation for four years if he completes additional training.
via Physician who had nurses prosecuted is placed on probation | State | News from Fort Wort….
Ugh.
Wonder who gets to do his chart review? I think this ‘additional training” is a ruse. We had an older doc retire from our institution. He came back as a locums several years later (now in his late 70s). I recognized his name in a few progress notes and consults. He was borderline competent when he was staff, when he came back years later he was clearly not competent to practice. I contacted credentialing to express my concerns, but his contract was nearly up, so they didn’t care to evaluate him. Checked the medical board site and saw that he had been evaluated in another state and issued a letter of ‘concern’ and was required to complete CME. IMO it did not appear to improve his practice any.
Good grief. What’s a poor defenseless patient to do when you learn that your doc needs to be babysat by a “monitor” for FOUR YEARS? There must be some kind of contractual vicegrip this doctor has on Winkler Memorial Hospital that keeps him from just getting fired once and for all.
But these two accused nurses could not possibly have been the only ones aware of/alarmed by Arafiles’ incompetence on the job.
An interesting study published last July in JAMA revealed that, although most physicians believe that their medical colleagues who are “significantly impaired or incompetent to practice medicine” should be reported, the reality was that a disturbing number (over one third) actually chose instead to sit by and do nothing even when they admitted they had “direct personal knowledge” of such incompetence. More on this at THE ETHICAL NAG: MARKETING ETHICS FOR THE EASILY SWAYED: ‘What Doctors Should Do – But Don’t – When Their Colleagues Are “Significantly Impaired or Incompetent To Practice Medicine” –
http://ethicalnag.org/2010/07/15/reporting-impaired-incompetent-doctors/
But what really caught my eye in the JAMA report was that 64% of surveyed physicians agreed with “the professional commitment to report physicians who are significantly impaired or otherwise incompetent to practice”.
This sounds like pretty good news, until you realize what it really means: that over one third of physicians do NOT agree with the need to report their impaired or incompetent colleagues. Just look the other way and instead let them loose on their poor unsuspecting patients.
Good on the two brave nurses in this case who had the courage to come forward – but they should never have had to go through this traumatic court case in the first place.
This sounds like pretty good news, until you realize what it really means: that over one third of physicians do NOT agree with the need to report their impaired or incompetent colleagues. Just look the other way and instead let them loose on their poor unsuspecting patients. We had an older doc retire from our institution. He came back as a locums several years later (now in his late 70s). I recognized his name in a few progress notes and consults. Texas medical regulators on Friday placed on probation a West Texas doctor involved in the unsuccessful prosecution of two nurses who complained anonymously that the physician was unethical and risking patients’ health.