Speak Out Rheum: To Prescribe Is Humane (Unless You’re In Texas)

The prosecution, citing the National Academy of Medicine’s controversial and flawed report To Err Is Human, proclaims that you are part of the problem with the medical establishment and that your treatment of the patient is a criminal offense in Texas.²²

As you await the court’s judgment and contemplate your future, you ask yourself why anyone would want to go to medical school or apply for residency in a state like this.

Residency review committees have already documented deficiencies in training in states with injunctions on providing training on such fundamental procedures as dilatation and curettage.

Why would any practitioner want to remain in a state with antediluvian laws that compel the practice of bad medicine at the patient’s expense over supporting best practices of the medical profession? If you want to practice good medicine, why not head to enlightened states and leave ones like Texas to become medical wastelands?

Finally, you ask when will your colleagues come together across the medical spectrum and exclaim, “We are mad as hell, and we aren’t going to take it anymore!” and then take action?²³

Wake Up!

Suddenly, you open your eyes. You’re in bed and in a cold sweat. You shudder, glance furtively around and whisper, “That sure was a scary nightmare!”

Or was it?²⁴

Raymond Scalettar, MD, DSc, MACR, is clinical professor of medicine emeritus, the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, D.C.

References

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