Question

Ms. Smith, a nurse in the 150-bed community hospital in Ocala (population 50,000), is a shrewd overseer. She has noted that Dr. Coupay does an extraordinary number of hysterectomies on very young women. He does as many as 10 to 15 per week.

                While nursing Dr. Coupay's patients, Ms. Smith gets the impression that they were rushed into the operation and did not fully understand what was happening. Through friends in Pathology, she hears a rumor that most of these hysterectomies appear to have been unnecessary, since there were no signs of cancer or fibroid tumors and no signs of damage to the uterus. She mentions this to her supervisor, who tells her that the matter is being investigated. Besides, the hospital census is down and those patients help to keep things going. Six months later, the situation is unchanged.

                Ordinarily, the hospital tissue committee would take care of this problem. In the absence of action from the tissue committee, should Mrs. Smith make a formal complaint? If a formal complaint does no good, what should she do?

Answer 1

Mrs Smith needs to take a stand and if she is sure about the fabrication of cases, she needs to act as a whistle-blower. Mrs Smith needs to thoroughly research and be sure that there have been some fraud involved in the cancer cases. When she feels that she has some concrete evidence, she can do a formal complaint and become a whistle-blower.

If a formal complaint does no good, Mrs Smith can leverage over the power of social media and get the case in public. This will force the authorities to take sufficient action in the case.