Why not choose a lawyer
with the same religion as the hospital?

One of the things you may wish to consider when choosing a lawyer is whether there might be a conflict of interest for the lawyer. In their duty to advocate, lawyers are granted the privilege of saying things they do not believe. If they choose not to do their duty, they just don’t say things. For instance, they might not correct misstatements of fact. So the one side can tells lies while the other side does not correct them. It is quite easy for a lawyer with a conflict of interest to pretend to be on your side while destroying you.

Defending a patient can be require indicting a hospital. You might wish to consider whether the religion of your lawyer puts him or her in the position of having to indict a bureaucracy affiliated with his or her religion. A normal patient trusts licensed professionals like lawyers and surgeons and nurses and anesthesiologists. A normal patient might even think a lawyer would remove him or herself from a case if there were a conflict of interest. A normal patient does not expect to be betrayed in the name of God by a lawyer violating the most fundamental precepts of his or her profession. But they do. They get paid for it either way.

A lawyer even might feel an antipathy for a client who became a victim in a hospital. It might make the lawyer decide to subpoena documents, depose witnesses, find expert testimony or even learn the facts of the case. If a second lawyer has to become involved in defending the client, the first lawyer might convince the second that the client is guilty and that their job is to stop, silence and defeat the client they have sworn to defend.

A lawyer being paid to protect that client might never learn what most of the issues are. Such a lawyer might pretend to being doing his or her job simply by going to court to claim that the patient might have hallucinated the events, but without calling any witnesses to testify to that. This might be in spite of the fact that there is ample proof that the patient remembers the events and even the conversation in the operating room and was lucid enough to crack jokes that caused everyone to laugh. But the lawyer might never obtain and/or introduce any of the evidence for that, and might prevent the patient from bringing expert witnesses who can clear him or her.

Even if there are x-rays and ultrasounds of the injuries that already have been entered in evidence, the lawyer might never point out any of them to the jury. When this is pointed out to the lawyer, he or she might simply sidestep the issue by saying that the jury is free to ignore evidence, when the issue is whether the lawyer is free never to present it to the jury.

The lawyer might not even correct lies told in court. When the caregiver’s lawyer says that the patient said things that the patient never said, the patient’s lawyer might not correct those lies. The very speech that is the subject of the lawsuit might be incorrectly stated to the jury, and the patient’s might lawyer never correct that. The most important words in the entire trial, the very matter over which the suit has been filed might be incorrectly reported to the jury and the patient’s lawyer might not be interested enough in defending the patient to have done enough homework to be aware of what is true and should be corrected.

The patient’s lawyer also might not do a relevant cross examination of the plaintiff’s witnesses. When one of the plaintiff’s witnesses makes completely erroneous statements about what might be causing the continuing suffering of the patient, the patient’s lawyer might never introduce all of the x-rays and ultrasounds and diagnoses that not only verify that there are injuries, but also corroborate the patient’s account of how he or she was injured. So the jury might be left thinking that it is all in the patient’s head.

The patient’s lawyer might go all the way through the trial without ever even suggesting that the patient might be innocent or that the events described might actually have happened. The lawyer might only say to the jury that the case is not worth as much as the plaintiff is asking, which is telling the jury that even the patient’s lawyer thinks the patient is guilty and all that the jury needs to do is to decide how much.

Then later the lawyer can simply say that he or she doesn’t know what that jury heard that made them jump to such a preposterous verdict, when the problem is that the jury didn’t hear a defense at all.

If you are in battle and the people on your side wish you were dead, they don’t have to shoot you. They need only make sure that you don’t have any ammunition when they send you into the line of fire and pretend to be watching out for you while they only are watching you get shot.

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At the time of this writing, if you were a normal patient checking into a hospital for an outpatient procedure, you might not be aware of the crime rate in medicine. If you were a normal patient, you would not be aware that caregivers commit crimes against patients. The stories of serial killers in medicine have not been understood as bellwethers of patient safety in general, but spun as extremes about which normal patients need not worry. The fact that only the extreme cases surface is one of the thing about which patients need to worry.

In fact, medicine is a profession that attracts people with antisocial desires. It is a place that puts them in a position where satisfying sick desires is easy, as well as being a place where good for getting away with it. But a normal patient doesn’t know that.

If you were a normal patient under a local anesthetic and, during the procedure, a nurse was groping you, you might be shocked and confused and embarrassed, but you also might be intimidated and helpless. A normal patient does not expect a caregiver to do something obscene and illegal to him or her, and does not know how to respond if a caregiver does.

A normal patient is not aware of the extent to which hospitals can be libidinous places where pretty nurses, powerful doctors and helpless patients are tempting reasons for some people to choose careers there.

If the patient were a female whose private parts were being groped by a male nurse during the operation, a normal patient in such a helpless position would be too shocked and intimidated to know how to respond at the moment. A normal patient thinks people become healthcare professionals for noble reasons. A normal patient isn’t aware that some health workers choose jobs that put them in close proximity to the private parts of patients for ignoble reasons.

If the nurse doing the groping were female and had something going on with the surgeon, a normal patient would not expect it to effect the surgeon’s behavior in the operating room. A normal patient does not expect a nurse to play a twisted, manipulative sexual game with a surgeon during an operation.

A normal patient also does not expect the surgeon, in a fit of jealousy, to reach outside the field of surgery to damage her private parts so that she never will be able to have sex again and will not be able to urinate normally ever again and will be in disabling pain for years. A normal patient does not know that the procedure being performed on her has no place in it for a surgeon to lower his or her shoulder like a linebacker and drive with all of his or her weight over and over into the patient’s private parts. A normal patient, seeing the slack jawed faces of the others in the operating room might worry that such blows were not normal, but would expect that if it were not normal, one of these other professionals would say something  or do something to protect her. A normal patient would be too shocked and fearful to say anything herself while worrying about what might happen next.

A normal patient does not know that the other healthcare workers have learned never to express surprise or shock, never to ask a patient if he or she is all right, and never to exhibit behavior that could indicate to a patient that something is not right.

In the weeks and months afterwards, a normal patient suffering terrible problems as a result of traumatic injuries, does not know that his or her primary care physician will not answer the question, “Is it normal to pound on a patient like that?” And does not know that anyone else in medicine of which that question is asked also will respond, “Why do you ask?” and then defend the surgeon. A normal patient does not know that all people in healthcare, ALL  people in healthcare, will defend the surgeon. Even a nurse two thousand miles away who is only an anonymous chatter on the Internet will not answer the question.

At the time of this writing a normal patient with injuries might expect that her family doctor would help her get treatment for injuries. A normal patient might not be aware that a physician would do almost anything other than create a diagnosis that indicts someone else in medicine. A normal patient might not be aware that physicians sometimes pretend to help in order to dupe patients into giving up and going away quietly. A patient who is in disabling pain and is deteriorating from injuries sustained when a jealous surgeon beat the living daylights out of her, might think her family doctor will do his or her duty to treat the injuries of a patient in need no matter what the source of the injuries. A normal patient might not expect her family doctor to send her to others for diagnosis while communicating to those others that anything they diagnose could be used in a criminal indictment of a colleague. Such communication could have the effect of denying treatment to a patient who is begging for it. A normal patient doesn’t really know what blacklisting is, partly because people in medicine mischaracterize it, creating confusion about what it is.

It might take several years of deteriorating, and having the fallout from that cause a career and a marriage to fall apart, before a normal patient finally has lost enough faith and done enough research to know what tests should have been ordered long ago. It might take longer to figure out how to escape to the influence of the family doctor by going to another city and paying cash so that no insurance records follow, in order finally to get the injuries diagnosed. After that much time, injuries might have become inoperable scar tissue and it might be too late for treatment. This can mean the disability now is total and permanent because of the blacklisting.

A normal patient does not know who to complain to in these circumstances. Several dozen calls to the hospital without getting anyone to listen can discourage a normal patient. As many calls to the police likely will do the same. A normal patient seeking justice for sins committed against her by healthcare workers might not think of the police as being people who often were lucky to have graduated from high school and now would be going up against healthcare workers who are smart and educated and supported by a culture dedicated to preventing them from responsibility.

When a patient we know went to the person in charge of complaints at the hospital, he was told about the surgeon, “Well, he wouldn’t do that. He’s one of our best surgeons,” and that was the end of that complaint. The police said things like, “There is no point in reporting it because there won’t be any witnesses. People in operating rooms always stick together.” The police also said, “The one-year statute of limitations has passed so it is too late to report it,” because it is normal for police speak as though they know the law when they don’t. This particular crime was disabling and therefore was a felony. Felonies have a six-year statute of limitations. The patient learned enough law to correct the misinformation stated by the police, only to have the police then say, “If it happens in a hospital it is civil and not criminal,” and repeat that over and over further demonstrating how shallow and inaccurate is their understanding of the law.

The police also said that if the patient filed criminal charges the patient would be sued for defamation (which is not true – you have the right to report to authorities without being sued, but a normal patient doesn’t know enough to disbelieve the police). The police warned that the patient would lose that suit. The police said that juries believe respectable healthcare professionals not whiny patients. They also warned that bankruptcy does not escape court judgments. The patient would lose everything and be burdened with an overwhelming debt that would be paid off for the rest of his life. That is enough to stop most patients.

The ones who are not stopped might have heard at some point that hospitals are required to tell patients who their caregivers are, but a normal patient does not understand that no one enforces such laws. When an injured patient wants to know the identities of the nurses and the anesthesiologist who were witnesses, hospitals say that they don’t know. When a patient obtains the post operative report that the witnesses were required to sign, the signatures conveniently can be illegible (doesn’t this violate a 1972 US Court of Appeals decision requiring language patients can understand?). The hospital claims to be unable to decipher them. Even a normal patient might know better than to believe that the hospital has no other record of who was in that operating room. But the hospital can maintain that ruse for years.

The patient we know told the police that the hospital would not reveal who the caregivers were on his case. The police said that the hospital has to. The patient said they won’t. The police repeated that they have to. This went on for quite a while before the police said, “What do you want us to do about it?” and claimed that it is none of their business. A normal patient might think that when someone breaks the law, that is the police’s business, but police often don’t see it that way.

The same was true when the patient’s primary care physician would not give the patient his records. The police refused to do anything about it. To get rid of the patient, the police referred the patient to one of the state medical boards, although they did not know which board would be the appropriate one. Unfortunately, the people answering the phones at the various medical boards also did not know. They did not even know if their own board was the appropriate one.

At the time of this writing, a patient who is the victim of crimes in medicine is like the first boy who came forward saying that a priest abused him. Everywhere that child and his parents turned, no one wanted to get involved and no one believed it. It can make the victim look paranoid when everyone to whom the victim turns dismisses him or her. At the time of this writing, normal police and physicians and nurses and lawyers and patients do not have the cultural vocabulary necessary to understand why so many patients get disabled or die unnecessarily in medicine each year. The victims who can provide that understanding cannot get anyone to listen. And if they try, they get sued into silence. So what is normal is for no one to understand how this works.

It is normal for all of these people to think that “someone” is overseeing all of this. Take the state medical board. State legislators and journalists and other members of the community think that state medical boards fulfill some kind of an oversight function. They do, but chiefly only in self-serving ways. For instance, no one but the police are authorized to investigate crimes. At the Ohio State Medical Board, it is not in their interest to know that, so the people who answer the phones do not know that. Neither do the people who review the complaints. Neither do the investigators. Neither do the police or the state legislators or the journalists. So how could a normal patient know that?

A normal patient who files a complaint with the state medical board in Ohio might be surprised to learn how much of the investigation that the patient has to do. . . Well, how much does the reader care to hear about that? Suffice it to say that the investigators may have little or no training or experience in medicine, and little or no experience or training in investigation either. They are civil servants who create more work for themselves and their colleagues if they find something. They get paid the same whether or not they do anything more than check boxes on forms. When the investigator goes to the hospital to find out who the witnesses were, the hospital merely need claim not to be able to read the signatures on the post operative report, and the investigator leaves without pursing it any further and dismisses the case for lack of evidence. This is the routine outcome for complaints filed by patients no matter how much evidence is supplied.

A normal patient could wonder if such an investigator ever gets to the bottom of any complaint filed by a patient. A review of the disciplinary actions of the state medical board of Ohio reveals that complaints filed by patients virtually never (and it might actually be never) result in discipline. When a normal patient takes abnormal initiative and works and works to collect diagnostic evidence of the injuries, a paper trail of the cover-up, and even locates a witness creating a case that cannot be dismissed for lack of evidence, years can pass before finally receiving a letter saying that the board has concluded that it is not charged with enforcing the laws relevant to this case, because it is a criminal case. The board accepts cases it is not authorized to enforce and then dismisses them, because it had no authorization to accept them in the first place, thus ending the matter. The file cabinet in which it tosses dismissed cases might as well be a trash can in which it tosses complaints from patients as soon as it accepts them.

Police generally have a policy of not duplicating the investigations of other agencies. So by accepting criminal complaints, state medical boards shield criminal activity forever.

At the time of this writing most patients do not know how to post a website. But some do. It requires only buying a program and a Dummies book on how to use it. Such a patient, exasperated at having no one listen, might decide that in order to get the hospital to listen to his or her complaint, it might be efficacious to create an obscure website with the x-rays and ultrasounds of the injuries, and the diagnoses linked to a description of the sins committed against the patient. Perhaps in this form someone might listen.

If such a patient posted the site and sent a letter to the CEO of the hospital group, the patient could find herself in court in short order. And this is where choosing a lawyer becomes problematic.

A normal patient also does not know the religion of the lawyer recently hired and does not know that it can be an issue, especially if it is the same religion as, say, the nurse who groped her causing a jealous surgeon to assault the patient, and the hospital to cover it up and the lawyer hired by the patient to feel more loyalty to those members of that faith than to the patient who hired him or her. Sounds paranoid, doesn’t it? All victims of crimes in medicine are painted as paranoid, from the very first time they come forward, even when they have physical injuries to prove what happened to them, and a paper trail, and hostile witnesses who cannot deny enough things to hide it.

Even when religion is not an issue, patients who are victims of unfriendly practices in medicine are like the first boy who came forward complaining that a priest abused him. It’s not that people haven’t heard of nurses and surgeons who were serial killers and sex offenders. It’s that people have never been allowed to hear from the victims. As a result, at the time of this writing, society has not been allowed to gain the cultural vocabulary to discuss and understand crime in medicine. Medicine has silenced its victims so well. When victims gain the right to speak, it will be the beginning for patient safety. Until then, miscreants in medicine have few curbs on their behavior. We cannot reduce mere errors in an environment in which we are not willing to address the injuries and deaths that are not errors.

If you were a pedophile working in pediatrics, wouldn’t you want to keep things this way? If anyone filed criminal charges against you or warned anyone about you, you could sue them and get rich. Like Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the founding fathers of the USA, who got rich when someone complained about him (for causing lots of deaths, not for pedophilia). It’s nothing new. It is the way it worked then and works now in medicine.

In the meantime there is the crushing issue of members of the same religious community operating as though blind loyalty to that were more important than ethics or integrity or justice or obeying laws or preventing future crimes against patients. Because of that, you may wish to avoid choosing a lawyer who shares the religious affiliation of the hospital and/or healthcare workers who committed life-ruining crimes against you.

Medicine, in general, is very adept at covering up sins and errors. So are some religions. Mixing the two can create a perfect storm – at least for patients. For the fish who swim in that sea, it can create an arrogance and indifference to the well-being of patients that is chilling, injurious and life-ruining, if not lethal. Their victims cannot get legal representation, cannot get anyone to listen to their complaints, and cannot even speak about without getting sued themselves. Where would you go if you were a sociopath?