r/interesting • u/tyrion2024 • 10h ago

MISC. A Virginia man inadvertently left his phone recording while he was under anesthesia for a colonoscopy, which captured audio of the doctors: mocking him, instructing a medical assistant to lie to him, and discussing giving him a false diagnosis of hemorrhoids. In 2015, a jury awarded him $500,000.

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u/Bhavacakra_12 10h ago

Cop behavior from the medical professionals honestly. Why be better people when you can handicap people's ability to catch misconduct?

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u/Ready-Rise3761 6h ago

sadly this is a common phenomenon (potentially linked to the fact that surgeons have a high psychopathy rate). There was a study about surgeons making degrading and objectifying remarks about naked and unconscious female patients. It showed that the presence of female nurses didn’t reduce the frequency of such remarks, only the presence of female doctors did.

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u/algol_lyrae 2h ago

I'm resistant to anesthetics, and I was semi-conscious when I heard my surgeon come in and torment me over the pain I was in. I'd had my skull and face sawed open for my surgery. There was no opportunity to tell anyone, and the assumption was that I was asleep or delirious anyway.

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u/Particular-Cat-1397 5h ago

That’s because everyone knows the mean girls in high school become nurses

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u/Gnomus_the_Gnome 5h ago

Probably more so the power dynamics that prevent nurses from speaking up against the doctor

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u/BigMadBigfoot 4h ago

My good friend is a nurse and she can no longer sit at the nurses station. This is because one time a doctor came over and wanted to sit down there and all the seats were taken by nurses.

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u/ActiveExisting3016 4h ago

Yeah lol the previous person is just a nurse-hater

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u/EcstaticManagement56 3h ago

Right, I always tip my hat to nurse, because they are the ones that will save your life!!

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u/[deleted] 4h ago edited 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/ActiveExisting3016 4h ago edited 1h ago

Regardless of how many studies from 2006 you throw at me, the fact that you’re generalizing “all nurses are mean girls” means your statement goes right into the garbage

I’m a nurse myself (albeit, a male) and obviously people are fucking assholes everywhere, including nursing, but I’m SO TIRED of seeing this profession dragged through the mud.

And no, I’m not saying that because I wasn’t bullied that it doesn’t happen. It does occur but it’s not this rampant wildfire that you’re making it out to be

Edit: and the comment was deleted! At least have the gall to stand by what you said. I doubt any learning took place

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u/Comfortable_Yak_1687 2h ago

You are totally right. My sister is a nurse and I have chronic health conditions, but she is great about it all! It is the system that restricts nurses abilities to do whatever, not the nurses fault. People think nurses are mean but that may come from the doctor! (Doctors are more well-known for their rudeness than nurses are). Nurses are the best!!! They get you places!

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u/Weak_Reports 2h ago

No, I think it because literally every mean girl I grew up with became a nurse and every asshole guy became a cop or joined the military

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u/ScientisticCatPerson 1h ago

The second part, you aren't wrong tbh. About the nurses, trust me, I have met my fair share of mean nurses, but there are so many more who are better than that

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u/SabrinaEdwina 4h ago

Can vouch. My extremely racist bully sibling is now a nurse post memes about how many lives they save.

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u/Barraco_Barmer 4h ago

The barrier for entry to nursing is surprisingly low

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u/deber38 4h ago

My bully became a nurse too. She loves the power

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u/Commercial_Sun_6300 1h ago

Male surgeons make degrading remarks and you blame the female nurses for it?

That's not mean girls, that misogyny on your part.

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u/Particular-Cat-1397 1h ago

No, but go off sis.

My comment was in response to the study that female nurses being present did not reduce the amount of degrading remarks about patients.

Also, the surgeon that this lawsuit was about was a woman, so try again.

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u/Commercial_Sun_6300 43m ago

The comment we were both discussing compared the behavior of surgeons in the presence of female nurses vs female doctors, which heavily implies the surgeons speaking are male.

>My comment was in response to the study that female nurses being present did not reduce the amount of degrading remarks about patients.

Yeah, and saying it's cause the nurses are mean girls rather than the much more obvious reason: they have less power.

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u/Dry-Independence8815 16m ago

Facts. I wish every nurse Knew that

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u/ThatIs1TastyBurger 4h ago

Holy fuck why is this so true?

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u/Sothdargaard 3h ago

I feel like this is pretty rare honestly. It's anecdotal of course but I assist in surgery (not a doctor) and have worked with hundreds of surgeons. I only ever met one who did this kind of stuff and it turns out he was SA patients in his clinic and got arrested so him talking crap about his patients was the least of their concerns.

I also work in the western US so I don't know if the attitude is different in the Midwest, South, Eastern US etc. but this behavior is pretty rare in my experience.

Also I'd like to point out there are tens of thousands of doctors in the US and they end up on the news or in court pretty rarely. Obviously there are some scumbag doctors out there and some of them get away with it but I would honestly guess it would be less than 2-3%.

Edits: phone typing corrections

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u/keygreen15 2h ago

I feel

Just stop right there.

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u/Sothdargaard 2h ago

I mean, it's just an expression. I could have easily said: In my experience.

Which is exactly what I shared.

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u/horriddaydream 4h ago

Yup, and also noting that a lot of surgeons vote red. That goes hand in hand. 🫠

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u/englishmaninsungurlu 40m ago

During my first year in medical school, I was sent to observe the plastic surgery OR. The first surgery I observed had all female surgeons, nurses and other staff. They were preparing an unconscious woman for liposuction. One of the residents said “why is her pussy so fucking dark”. Noped the fuck out of there and reported it to the attending. People can be evil in this business

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u/MiI0rd 8h ago

Corporate mentality really. Governments are not what we should fear, it’s company’s

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u/Bhavacakra_12 7h ago

Not necessarily wrong but I would fear the gun as much as the person wielding it.

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u/Writer13377 6h ago

Canadian here, it’s so much fucking worse when it’s the government, at least you can sue a company

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u/longlivenewsomflesh 6h ago

I can see why it might seem that way, but as an American, having the right to sue a company like facebook doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling that convinces me there's no sense in socializing it because god forbid I wouldn't be able to leverage my awesome and meaningful power to effect change by personally suing them... like come on, seems silly to pick a strategy of "blindly trusting sociopathic corporations which exist by definition to extract profits" over just focusing on making government work better...

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u/Writer13377 6h ago

Might be a Nobel prize in it for you if you can figure out a way to make governments work

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u/longlivenewsomflesh 6h ago

See but this what I find illogical like why take this fatalistic approach to something that's difficult (improving systems for public good) when the alternative is to put our trust in something 100% guaranteed to be not even useless but actively bad for humanity (private sector's profit motive) 

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u/how-2-B-anyone 5h ago

There are more sides to this; it would be lovely if people could agree on what public good means. Partisan politics and lobbying are the real enemy of that consensus. How are we supposed to agree on anything if the baseline is a VS not an &? I agree with you but for me the fatalism is understandable because "many a better person" has tried and failed, or died and their progress overwritten the second a new corporate aligned government issue came about, especially in the US but it is not exclusive to our very loud examples. Another lovely example is to look at the differences in Communism as a philosophy vs its various attempted implementations throughout history. Ideals are great, but few in power [read: financial security and titled authority] have enough enough understanding or empathy to employ them constructively beyond a personal level.

We as humans shouldn't trust anything that has an overall goal of "financial profit", in the private or public sector, in a government or a corporation, there is nothing meaningful about a numbers game while living needs exist.

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u/Writer13377 5h ago

One of those entities orchestrated the Holocaust, one of the, created the devices that allow us to communicate instantly across the planet

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u/Heseblese 6h ago

Well, sure. But Americans could also choose to focus on making companies work better. Facebook don’t exactly operate in a vacuum.

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u/scraw813 5h ago

People sue the government in America all the time. It’s how we lose most of our progressive policies. Even the president has sued the government.

There was a good freakonomics episode about how China engineers laws and Americans sue to make laws.

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u/Writer13377 5h ago

You can sue in America precisely because they are this kind of system, you hand the government even more power over life and death, they’re pretty prone to making sure you can’t take it away

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u/DontRateLimitMeBro 3h ago

while it is kinda crazy that the president can sue the government, your point about losing progressive policies due to citizens suing the govt. is wrong.

Right gained or protected Supreme Court case
Right to attend public schools without racial segregation Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
Right to interracial marriage Loving v. Virginia (1967)
Right to same-sex marriage Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

there are many many more examples.

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u/scraw813 1h ago

There are plenty where we’ve lost them too. Look at recent voting rights act decisions. Look at overturning of Roe. Courts are consistently rolling back the power of regulatory agencies to enforce the progressive agenda.

So if anything. The courts are erratic.

Edit to add: Don’t forget the Supreme Court castrating the Affordable Care Act

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u/Sweet_Solid_7746 4h ago

In America company’s fucking own the government

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u/Writer13377 4h ago

Ohoho you do NOT want to bitch about companies owning the government to a Canadian. We started as a collection of monopolies, and we will die as we lived

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u/MiI0rd 3h ago

Can you? Sign up for Disney plus free trial and unknowingly sign away your ability to sue and automatically agree to arbitration.just one example of too many you don’t want to know about

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u/DontRateLimitMeBro 3h ago

you can't sue the government?

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u/aptsys 5h ago

Finish the sentence then...

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u/phlegmdawg 5h ago

How about a government working for the companies instead of the people?

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u/Gendum-The-Great 5h ago

Governments hold the monopoly on violence and some have nuclear weapons.

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u/ActualCommon3820 4h ago

The biggest lie of my childhood was that governments were evil and if the government got out of my way I would be as successful as ole Sam Walton.

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u/Comfortable_Yak_1687 2h ago

How about both??

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u/PurpleDragonDix 5h ago

When my daughter was being born, I can recall the nurses telling my mother to put her phone away and couldn't record the birth of her grandchild in case there was malpractice.

Good thing we caught that little line within the video because nothing could've stopped my mom from recording even if it was hospital security.

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u/BorgQuingus67 2h ago

That's actually crazy "you can't record us in case it captures evidence of us doing something wrong" lmao what the fuck

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u/Steephill 6h ago

Medical malpractice kills far more people per year than police do, no one should be surprised the medical fields doesn't want to be recorded.

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u/Rasabk 3h ago

Alright reddit, your time to shine. ADAB baby!

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u/Key-Abbreviations961 6h ago

Cop behavior has improved dramatically since body cams have become ubiquitous

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u/tiramisuem3 56m ago

Do you have data to back this up? I remember reading a study actually saying the opposite, that cops just turn them off and that shooting of civilians has not decreased

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u/PartyWooden6249 8h ago

I think about 5% of American doctors are good people and 95% of them want to be demigods. It’s like becoming a Priest

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u/shoulderpain2013 5h ago

As an American doctor, you are referring to surgeons. The vast majority of other physicians don’t have this complex.

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u/PartyWooden6249 5h ago

I said what I said

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u/Anthemusa831 7h ago

Hard agree

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u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 7h ago

I honestly don't care what my surgeon says while I'm unconscious.

Just do my procedure.

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u/TheSumOfMyScars 7h ago

I mean if they're discussing how to lie to you to have to go chase a false diagnosis, I'd think it'd be in your best interest to not have them do that, no?

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u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 6h ago

Did they lie to him?

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u/AmericanWitness 6h ago

…. Did you read the title, Boss?

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u/Slayerofgrundles 4h ago

It may have been in poor taste, but they were clearly joking. Nobody is giving false diagnoses for laughs.

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u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 5h ago edited 2h ago

This post is just some words and a picture. Did someone post an article, boss?

Edit: that guy edited his post from "article" to "title" after I made my comment.

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u/masimbasqueeze 4h ago

I agree patients deserve better. The issue with surreptitious recording is that I creates an adversarial relationship which Harms patients and doctors alike. Defensive medicine is often not what is best for the patient. We need a better relationship all around.

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u/Pug_Defender 4h ago

sometimes you gotta blow off some steam with coworkers without some dweeb making a big deal out of it!

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u/TyruntasaurusRecht 8h ago

Enh. I think when no ones listening its reasonable to joke and in healthcare I expect it would be dark humor given what they do and see.

Its not some gotcha moment. I assume they do this because its human. The lawsuit is ridiculous.

Make fun of whatever you want, but fix whatevers killing me please. Id rather a sarcastic, shitty, but competent doctor than a teddy bear that will kill me. Customer service and manners, especially in a specialists office dont matter to me. "What are your outcomes?" Matters to me.

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u/Reasonable_Sky9688 8h ago

It's entirely reasonable to expect both professional behaviour and competence

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u/TyruntasaurusRecht 7h ago

I can have my own opinion, thanks.

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u/Anthemusa831 7h ago

As is the person whose comment you responded to.

First day here?

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u/Reasonable_Sky9688 7h ago

Yes you can, it gives sensible people a foil to reflect on

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u/Aurorer 7h ago

The lawsuit was specifically about the doctors planning to give the plaintiff a false diagnosis. Which should result in the revocation of everyone’s medical license.

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u/TyruntasaurusRecht 7h ago

Did they actually diagnose him with that though or were they joking?

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u/Aurorer 7h ago

The doctors claim they were “joking”. But that’s not a good defense. If it was, I could conspire to commit arson and then just tell everyone I was joking to get out of it. Our legal system has to assume that what people talk about doing is actually true in order to hold anyone accountable.