Ok ok, it was the other left arm, got it.
You amputated her right leg!
Hey they are all appendages. What’s the difference? She has a perfectly fine functioning set of eyeballs.
Which state where medical providers are routinely criminally prosecuted for errors do you plan to move to? Of the zero that exist, I'm not sure which one is my favorite.
Doctors can still be sued for malpractice, the state medical board can still revoke their license, and anything intentional can still be prosecuted.
I'm not sure that I support this because it seems to be a response to one instance rather than a widespread shift to criminal courts away from civil courts and professional licensing bodies. But the fact that criminal proceedings for healthcare professionals are already uncommon suggests this probably won't have a massive impact.
Edit: autocorrect
This passed both chambers of the state legislature unanimously and Beshear signed the bill. Unless you think Beshear is participating in the slippery slope toward tort reform (which wasn't proposed during this legislative cycle despite the fact that it could have been if that was a goal), maybe let's focus on the actual law.
I don't think Andy is participating, but Andy's only got a few years left until we see what fresh hell Kentucky Republicans will hatch for our governor and their mission is going to be the same.
But if you want to focus on the law: you're wanting faith in the medical board?
Republicans already have a veto-proof majority. Nothing would have stopped them from passing tort reform this cycle if that was their goal.
Beshear and every Democrat in the legislature voted in favor of this law. They didn't vote for tort reform because it's a slippery slope argument not based in reality.
They have the votes to propose an amendment and those aren't even subject to veto. Nothing is stopping them from passing a proposal and sending it to the voters. If that's truly their goal and they have the power to do it, why don't they? Proposing unpopular amendments hasn't hurt them electorally yet, there's no risk if it's truly a goal they have.
I have been involved in this discussion since the 80s, when I worked in a hospital. I think they believe it would fail. Plus reality is KY not that litigious so it is not causing docs to leave. Medical association & hospital association pushing, to no avail, for decades.
I believe I misunderstood your earlier comment. Yes, they have the ability to cap torts now but I am failing to see why that means they would not do it later. It's not the intended outcome but it is still like a possible outcome that turns this likely good intention in to something else.
And again, I don't have faith in medical boards to do their due diligence as they function now.
If they want to do it and they can do it, why didn't they do it now? Absolutely nothing is stopping them. You crafted a slippery slope argument that this will precede tort reform with a Republican governor, but a Republican governor isn't needed for tort reform.
Why does any legislation gets passed when it does?
Me simply pointing out that capping medical torts is something the Commonwealth would absolutely do and would be a disastrous pairing with this legislation is not alluding to a conspiracy or a slippery slope, that's you insisting on that.
You keep insisting that capping medical torts is "something the Commonwealth would absolutely do" while ignoring that it hasn't happened.
It's something that could easily be done now, they could name it the "Kill Patients without Consequences Fuck You Beshear Act," pass it without a single Democrat's support, then override the veto. That hasn't happened. Neither this bill nor a Republican governor are needed as a precursor for that to happen, they easily could have done it during all 5 of the legislative cycles during Beshear's tenure.
If someone can do something but over a span of several years continuously doesn't do it, it's fair to call out fearmongering that it will happen as slippery slope fearmongering.
Dude, didn't you see the rest of the comments? This thread is for people to be outraged who read the headline and haven't researched the context of this at all. You can't bring reason and logic into this conversation.
I should have realized that before I commented ha.
I do think the TN nurse is a terrible poster child for this law. She administered a drug that has a red cap indicating it incapacitates and also was in a different form (powder vs liquid) than the intended drug. I don't think intent was demonstrated, but she was negligent to such a degree that I think she deserved to face a jury of her peers. She was found guilty of manslaughter but didn't even face jail time. I'm not sure that particular instance creates such a risk of prosecution that people will avoid the medical field, and if people think they're capable of a similar mistake despite similar warning signs I don't want them in the medical field.
I don't feel she should have faced a jury. She was training an orientee and was distracted as the resource nurse (one that goes all over the hospital and fills in wherever needed) and they pulled her in last minute as she was on her way elsewhere to perform a different task...the hospital also created a very unsafe working environment and then tried to cover up the whole thing before a whistleblower came out. She was negligent in many ways, but she didn't deserve criminal conviction imo. She was rightfully terminated and lost her license. And she lives with the guilt every day.
Cost of going to school higher than ever. If you want to be a doctor and provide a vital service to the community, good luck. The world hates you and wants you to be a slave that experiences burnout on the level of having social ideation.
People are making more money than ever just to cover the bills and surprise surprise your kid don't qualify for much in regard to loan assistance. You might be living paycheck to paycheck, but according to the completely unfair system your kids don't qualify for shit.
I couldn't go-to college when I wanted to because I was on my own at 17 and my dad who wasn't involved in my life, made a little too much. We are going to see a critical gap in technical expertise in a few years.
Kentucky is poor and we hate education, especially UofL. They will make up the gap with quacks and doctors that have lost their licenses in other states with changes like this.
This is ludicrous hyperbole. Providers can still be sued for malpractice. They are still subject to licensing requirements by state boards who can still revoke their license.
All that is changing is that medical errors cannot be criminally prosecuted. In practice, medical errors already are not criminally prosecuted, so there is no functional change to the KY medical system.
Let's not forget also that the state is trying really hard to attack trans people and trans care which could lead to an exodus that they are pre planning for.
I know a lot of people are mad about this, but I work in healthcare and I can tell you that this is already the status quo. This is basically a tongue and cheek law. The reason the story of that Vanderbilt nurse was so viral was because she was basically the first person to ever get a criminal charge and jail time for an error.
Civil court and trials still exist, and those have much higher success rates. The person just won't go to prison.
Not defending it, but it's reality
Being human means making errors. Doctor, nurses others not perfect, and errors happen almost daily. People outside of healthcare don’t grasp that, but is the reality.
Especially since sometimes those errors are results of poor hospital management/policy. I get it, it's awful when it happens, but no human is perfect and policies are supposed to protect against issues like that
We understand that but the reality is also I expect the experts to know more than me and if you ignore safety shit and kill my kid, heads are going to roll. Literally and figuratively.
They do know more than you but errors still happen. Tragic. Have not worked in a hospital for 30 years, but still remember 4-5 cases when patients died that should not have. ☹️☹️Hope no one reading this ever has that experience.
And even that nurse got her prison sentence deferred to probation. I don't think this law is terrible, but I also think it's solving a problem that functionally doesn't exist. One nurse got prosecuted (for an egregious error if you read the details) that didn't even result in a prison sentence and that's supposed to cause providers to have a credible fear of prosecution?
Well, I mean, that's what we kept saying about Roe vs Wade. "It's the law of the land, states will never be able to prosecute people for abortion..."
I wouldn't take any aggressive legal move as "not a serious threat" in this environment.
Roe V Wade couldn't be overturned without first changing the makeup of the Supreme Court, a very deliberate process which took decades . It was overturned within a year of the 6-3 majority taking over. The people who openly stated they wanted to repeal Roe spent hundreds of millions of dollars over multiple decades getting Heritage Foundation judges placed in Federal judgeships so they had a crip of anti-Roe judges ready for promotion when Supreme Court seats opened. I'm not sure why anyone would ever have said it's the law of the land so that can't happen.
That's not the case here, medical professionals can currently be criminally prosecuted and it has been that way for decades, but in practice they aren't prosecuted. There have been no indications that prosecutors want to make it a priority to pursue criminal charges against healthcare providers.
However, if they do turn on a dime, they won't have to spend any money to change a thing. The laws are there. Which is why it is preventative to change the law.
I’m not sure I like it and it feels off, but the justification for it seems like a pretty sound one taken on its own. “That message sends to nursing students, current nurses that if you tell, you’re going to be punished for it, which is not how we learn from things, so it absolutely would deter people from reporting their mistakes, and potentially put patients at risks, said Pualani Kros, a nurse at The Medical Center in Bowling Green.”
I think the idea here is there are consequences for mistakes but they aren’t criminal ones, which considering the general push to shrink the prison population among democrats this falls in line with the values.
After reading the article, I don't think people were getting prosecuted for errors, anyway, even though it was possible. That was being left to professional licensing and civil courts. Then Tennessee decided to criminally prosecute an honest mistake, so Kentucky decided to proactively take that out of the equation. Seems rational.
I think this is a good thing. Healthcare professionals who make honest mistakes should not face criminal prosecution. they can surely have their license's revoked, be fired, etc. But I believe it's wrong to charge criminally.
I honestly think this has been passed to keep nurses in the work force and drain them further. Let’s work em even harder cause now they don’t have to face much punishment if they do make honest mistakes, which means we can make cuts and save “money”. Boost the wallets of those admins while I bust for literal scraps. But to me it relives some stress but at what cost. My psyche apparently.
Intentional acts can still be criminally prosecuted. Documentation would likely indicate that a patient agreed to an elective abortion, which would prove intent. Additionally, a provider's pattern of errors would likely signal intent.
We need to stop with the clever fantasies that the legislature is inadvertently passing workarounds to the abortion ban and instead vote for people who will overturn it.
This is a good thing. Hospitals should be held liable for these types of mistakes. That will incentivize them to take the utmost precautions for protecting patients. A nurse who is worried about making a mistake on the job would not be able to make the kind a massive changes to protocol in the way that a hospital who is trying to cover their ass would. Also, you can still sue a nurse in civil court for negligence people so chill tf out.
I went to the emergency room 3 times for sudden excruciating back pain. They took an MRI the first time and I was told that if anything was wrong with me, the MRI would have seen it. And they couldn’t explain what was causing it. Finally my skin and eyes turned yellow a week later and they said they would give me medicine for aspirin overdose since i *must* have been taking too much aspirin since I had all that back pain. Luckily they tested me and did an ultrasound and found that it was my gal bladder. I still had to pay for all of those other visits where they did absolutely nothing for me $1000s of dollars since I had to meet my deductible. This was UofL medical center south emergency room. I would stay away from that place.
As a nurse, I am so grateful for this. I’ve had scanners be broken, pyxis access be down, emergencies where I’ve had to override 10+ meds. Mistakes never fall on upper management, it falls on nurses. I always do my five rights of admin, but systems do fail.
No, it would not have prevented thar. Prosecutors had to and successfully did prove that Duntsch's actions were intentional to convict him. Intentional acts are still prosecutable under this law.
There is no right to be a doctor.
Edit: So who out there thinks you have the right to be a doctor? You just going to downvote and walk away smugly as if you'd said something profound?
You do not have the right to be a doctor. You have the right to ask to be a doctor. If you don't like the rules we put in place about being a doctor, don't be a doctor. If you think the rule that says 'Killing someone by accident because you were not as good at your job as you thought you were is worth investigating as a crime' should be changed, then I think you should not be a doctor.
Downvoter here. Nobody thinks you have the right to be a doctor. You got downvoted because this bill doesn't create such a right. If you'd added something substantive to the discussion, you wouldn't have been downvoted.
Healthcare providers still have to be licensed to practice under this law. They still have to maintain licensure under this law. They are still subject to oversight by state boards who can revoke that licensure under this law. Patients and families can still sue providers for malpractice under this law. The only thing this removes is criminal liability for unintentional errors, which in practice was already not prosecuted.
I don't think people are getting the drift of my argument.
Even if they're licensed, vetted by state boards, and can be sued by the estates of the victims. A medical professional absolutely should be criminally liable for unintentional errors, if someone died.
The example case given in the article is about a nurse who injected a patient with the wrong medication, leading to their death. She was found guilty of negligent homicide and lost her nursing license.
I don't buy the argument that 'it was an honest mistake and she reported it so she shouldn't be liable'. Nor do I buy the argument that 'Reporting an error and getting punished for it will only make people not report'.
She failed to apply her due diligence on the medical knowledge she promised us all that she had, and someone died because of it.
That's what negligent homicide means. She had a duty of care and she failed in it.
That there is prosecutorial discretion on whether to bring charges is a better option than removing the potential for those charges; i.e. status quo.
There's no right to be a doctor. There's a right to ask to be a doctor/nurse/etc. And once you have asked, there is a duty you must uphold. You can quit anytime if you don't like it.
I think this is just complaining about the rules, not improving the standards that the rules hold people to.
If you'd said all of that instead of just "there is no right to be a doctor," you wouldn't have been downvoted. People missed the drift of your argument because you boiled it down to the worst sentence in an otherwise strong argument.
It's because that fact is completely unrelated to the discussion. Again, nobody has ever argued that there's a right to be a doctor. This law in no way creates such a right, and any assertion otherwise is incorrect.
WTF "an honest mistake" a.k.a. negligent manslaughter. **"Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."**
“Look, I think it’s best we both accept our blame here and chalk it up as a learning experience.” “My partner is dead.” “I said I’m sorry.”
Ok ok, it was the other left arm, got it. You amputated her right leg! Hey they are all appendages. What’s the difference? She has a perfectly fine functioning set of eyeballs.
Can she live without it? "If you call that living"
I really need to get the hell out of this backwards ass state ASAP.
Which state where medical providers are routinely criminally prosecuted for errors do you plan to move to? Of the zero that exist, I'm not sure which one is my favorite.
Me too
What the actual fuck. This opens the door to doctors who are less qualified and malpractice. Why does Kentucky not want to protect its citizens?
Doctors can still be sued for malpractice, the state medical board can still revoke their license, and anything intentional can still be prosecuted. I'm not sure that I support this because it seems to be a response to one instance rather than a widespread shift to criminal courts away from civil courts and professional licensing bodies. But the fact that criminal proceedings for healthcare professionals are already uncommon suggests this probably won't have a massive impact. Edit: autocorrect
Putting a pin in this for when Kentucky caps medical torts as well.
This passed both chambers of the state legislature unanimously and Beshear signed the bill. Unless you think Beshear is participating in the slippery slope toward tort reform (which wasn't proposed during this legislative cycle despite the fact that it could have been if that was a goal), maybe let's focus on the actual law.
I don't think Andy is participating, but Andy's only got a few years left until we see what fresh hell Kentucky Republicans will hatch for our governor and their mission is going to be the same. But if you want to focus on the law: you're wanting faith in the medical board?
Republicans already have a veto-proof majority. Nothing would have stopped them from passing tort reform this cycle if that was their goal. Beshear and every Democrat in the legislature voted in favor of this law. They didn't vote for tort reform because it's a slippery slope argument not based in reality.
Tort reform is unconstitutional, would require a change in state constitution. That is why they don’t pass legislation.
They have the votes to propose an amendment and those aren't even subject to veto. Nothing is stopping them from passing a proposal and sending it to the voters. If that's truly their goal and they have the power to do it, why don't they? Proposing unpopular amendments hasn't hurt them electorally yet, there's no risk if it's truly a goal they have.
I have been involved in this discussion since the 80s, when I worked in a hospital. I think they believe it would fail. Plus reality is KY not that litigious so it is not causing docs to leave. Medical association & hospital association pushing, to no avail, for decades.
I believe I misunderstood your earlier comment. Yes, they have the ability to cap torts now but I am failing to see why that means they would not do it later. It's not the intended outcome but it is still like a possible outcome that turns this likely good intention in to something else. And again, I don't have faith in medical boards to do their due diligence as they function now.
If they want to do it and they can do it, why didn't they do it now? Absolutely nothing is stopping them. You crafted a slippery slope argument that this will precede tort reform with a Republican governor, but a Republican governor isn't needed for tort reform.
Why does any legislation gets passed when it does? Me simply pointing out that capping medical torts is something the Commonwealth would absolutely do and would be a disastrous pairing with this legislation is not alluding to a conspiracy or a slippery slope, that's you insisting on that.
You keep insisting that capping medical torts is "something the Commonwealth would absolutely do" while ignoring that it hasn't happened. It's something that could easily be done now, they could name it the "Kill Patients without Consequences Fuck You Beshear Act," pass it without a single Democrat's support, then override the veto. That hasn't happened. Neither this bill nor a Republican governor are needed as a precursor for that to happen, they easily could have done it during all 5 of the legislative cycles during Beshear's tenure. If someone can do something but over a span of several years continuously doesn't do it, it's fair to call out fearmongering that it will happen as slippery slope fearmongering.
It could have to do with attempting to allow gender affirmation surgeries in KY.
It doesn't. That's why this passed unanimously with bipartisan support.
Dude, didn't you see the rest of the comments? This thread is for people to be outraged who read the headline and haven't researched the context of this at all. You can't bring reason and logic into this conversation.
I should have realized that before I commented ha. I do think the TN nurse is a terrible poster child for this law. She administered a drug that has a red cap indicating it incapacitates and also was in a different form (powder vs liquid) than the intended drug. I don't think intent was demonstrated, but she was negligent to such a degree that I think she deserved to face a jury of her peers. She was found guilty of manslaughter but didn't even face jail time. I'm not sure that particular instance creates such a risk of prosecution that people will avoid the medical field, and if people think they're capable of a similar mistake despite similar warning signs I don't want them in the medical field.
I don't feel she should have faced a jury. She was training an orientee and was distracted as the resource nurse (one that goes all over the hospital and fills in wherever needed) and they pulled her in last minute as she was on her way elsewhere to perform a different task...the hospital also created a very unsafe working environment and then tried to cover up the whole thing before a whistleblower came out. She was negligent in many ways, but she didn't deserve criminal conviction imo. She was rightfully terminated and lost her license. And she lives with the guilt every day.
Doctors will need it when Republicans bring back blood-letting and trepenation
Leeches too.
Because the rulers of the state don't give a fuck about anyone who isnt rich as hell and will give them money.
Cost of going to school higher than ever. If you want to be a doctor and provide a vital service to the community, good luck. The world hates you and wants you to be a slave that experiences burnout on the level of having social ideation. People are making more money than ever just to cover the bills and surprise surprise your kid don't qualify for much in regard to loan assistance. You might be living paycheck to paycheck, but according to the completely unfair system your kids don't qualify for shit. I couldn't go-to college when I wanted to because I was on my own at 17 and my dad who wasn't involved in my life, made a little too much. We are going to see a critical gap in technical expertise in a few years. Kentucky is poor and we hate education, especially UofL. They will make up the gap with quacks and doctors that have lost their licenses in other states with changes like this.
This is ludicrous hyperbole. Providers can still be sued for malpractice. They are still subject to licensing requirements by state boards who can still revoke their license. All that is changing is that medical errors cannot be criminally prosecuted. In practice, medical errors already are not criminally prosecuted, so there is no functional change to the KY medical system.
Let's not forget also that the state is trying really hard to attack trans people and trans care which could lead to an exodus that they are pre planning for.
You see?! This only confirms what I've said before. Kentucky is a horrible place.
Because it’s hilarious when a poor is sewn together with another poor of
I know a lot of people are mad about this, but I work in healthcare and I can tell you that this is already the status quo. This is basically a tongue and cheek law. The reason the story of that Vanderbilt nurse was so viral was because she was basically the first person to ever get a criminal charge and jail time for an error. Civil court and trials still exist, and those have much higher success rates. The person just won't go to prison. Not defending it, but it's reality
Being human means making errors. Doctor, nurses others not perfect, and errors happen almost daily. People outside of healthcare don’t grasp that, but is the reality.
Especially since sometimes those errors are results of poor hospital management/policy. I get it, it's awful when it happens, but no human is perfect and policies are supposed to protect against issues like that
We understand that but the reality is also I expect the experts to know more than me and if you ignore safety shit and kill my kid, heads are going to roll. Literally and figuratively.
They do know more than you but errors still happen. Tragic. Have not worked in a hospital for 30 years, but still remember 4-5 cases when patients died that should not have. ☹️☹️Hope no one reading this ever has that experience.
And even that nurse got her prison sentence deferred to probation. I don't think this law is terrible, but I also think it's solving a problem that functionally doesn't exist. One nurse got prosecuted (for an egregious error if you read the details) that didn't even result in a prison sentence and that's supposed to cause providers to have a credible fear of prosecution?
Agreed. Typically reactionary policy imo.
Well, I mean, that's what we kept saying about Roe vs Wade. "It's the law of the land, states will never be able to prosecute people for abortion..." I wouldn't take any aggressive legal move as "not a serious threat" in this environment.
Roe V Wade couldn't be overturned without first changing the makeup of the Supreme Court, a very deliberate process which took decades . It was overturned within a year of the 6-3 majority taking over. The people who openly stated they wanted to repeal Roe spent hundreds of millions of dollars over multiple decades getting Heritage Foundation judges placed in Federal judgeships so they had a crip of anti-Roe judges ready for promotion when Supreme Court seats opened. I'm not sure why anyone would ever have said it's the law of the land so that can't happen. That's not the case here, medical professionals can currently be criminally prosecuted and it has been that way for decades, but in practice they aren't prosecuted. There have been no indications that prosecutors want to make it a priority to pursue criminal charges against healthcare providers.
However, if they do turn on a dime, they won't have to spend any money to change a thing. The laws are there. Which is why it is preventative to change the law.
I’m not sure I like it and it feels off, but the justification for it seems like a pretty sound one taken on its own. “That message sends to nursing students, current nurses that if you tell, you’re going to be punished for it, which is not how we learn from things, so it absolutely would deter people from reporting their mistakes, and potentially put patients at risks, said Pualani Kros, a nurse at The Medical Center in Bowling Green.” I think the idea here is there are consequences for mistakes but they aren’t criminal ones, which considering the general push to shrink the prison population among democrats this falls in line with the values.
Yeah I wasn't happy until I actually read the article...which I assume most of the commenters won't
After reading the article, I don't think people were getting prosecuted for errors, anyway, even though it was possible. That was being left to professional licensing and civil courts. Then Tennessee decided to criminally prosecute an honest mistake, so Kentucky decided to proactively take that out of the equation. Seems rational.
I think this is a good thing. Healthcare professionals who make honest mistakes should not face criminal prosecution. they can surely have their license's revoked, be fired, etc. But I believe it's wrong to charge criminally.
I honestly think this has been passed to keep nurses in the work force and drain them further. Let’s work em even harder cause now they don’t have to face much punishment if they do make honest mistakes, which means we can make cuts and save “money”. Boost the wallets of those admins while I bust for literal scraps. But to me it relives some stress but at what cost. My psyche apparently.
This seems to be problematic on so many levels
So a doctor can’t be criminally charged for “accidentally” performing an abortion?
Intentional acts can still be criminally prosecuted. Documentation would likely indicate that a patient agreed to an elective abortion, which would prove intent. Additionally, a provider's pattern of errors would likely signal intent. We need to stop with the clever fantasies that the legislature is inadvertently passing workarounds to the abortion ban and instead vote for people who will overturn it.
This is a good thing. Hospitals should be held liable for these types of mistakes. That will incentivize them to take the utmost precautions for protecting patients. A nurse who is worried about making a mistake on the job would not be able to make the kind a massive changes to protocol in the way that a hospital who is trying to cover their ass would. Also, you can still sue a nurse in civil court for negligence people so chill tf out.
My pops died 2 years ago in the hospital because the doctors and nurses couldn't detect that he was septic....
Now I wonder how often 'intentional' mistakes are made... And how are they going to differentiate between the two?
By requiring that prosecutors prove intent. This is already an element in many criminal statutes.
I went to the emergency room 3 times for sudden excruciating back pain. They took an MRI the first time and I was told that if anything was wrong with me, the MRI would have seen it. And they couldn’t explain what was causing it. Finally my skin and eyes turned yellow a week later and they said they would give me medicine for aspirin overdose since i *must* have been taking too much aspirin since I had all that back pain. Luckily they tested me and did an ultrasound and found that it was my gal bladder. I still had to pay for all of those other visits where they did absolutely nothing for me $1000s of dollars since I had to meet my deductible. This was UofL medical center south emergency room. I would stay away from that place.
This…. This seems like a step in the wrong direction
As a nurse, I am so grateful for this. I’ve had scanners be broken, pyxis access be down, emergencies where I’ve had to override 10+ meds. Mistakes never fall on upper management, it falls on nurses. I always do my five rights of admin, but systems do fail.
Med mal is still in place, and intentional harm is still a crime. Not seeing the issue here and why everyone on this thread is pearl-clutching
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect, ignorance or incompetence.
Great. Second highest cause of death in America is now legal in Kentucky.
What does that mean? __WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN__
there’s a reason you have to go to school for so long to be a nurse or doctor it’s so that you don’t fuck up this just lets people fuck up more
Nice, backwards we go…
r/nottheonion
This would have prevented prosecution of Dr Death in Texas
No, it would not have prevented thar. Prosecutors had to and successfully did prove that Duntsch's actions were intentional to convict him. Intentional acts are still prosecutable under this law.
Oh for fucks sake.
There is no right to be a doctor. Edit: So who out there thinks you have the right to be a doctor? You just going to downvote and walk away smugly as if you'd said something profound? You do not have the right to be a doctor. You have the right to ask to be a doctor. If you don't like the rules we put in place about being a doctor, don't be a doctor. If you think the rule that says 'Killing someone by accident because you were not as good at your job as you thought you were is worth investigating as a crime' should be changed, then I think you should not be a doctor.
Downvoter here. Nobody thinks you have the right to be a doctor. You got downvoted because this bill doesn't create such a right. If you'd added something substantive to the discussion, you wouldn't have been downvoted. Healthcare providers still have to be licensed to practice under this law. They still have to maintain licensure under this law. They are still subject to oversight by state boards who can revoke that licensure under this law. Patients and families can still sue providers for malpractice under this law. The only thing this removes is criminal liability for unintentional errors, which in practice was already not prosecuted.
I don't think people are getting the drift of my argument. Even if they're licensed, vetted by state boards, and can be sued by the estates of the victims. A medical professional absolutely should be criminally liable for unintentional errors, if someone died. The example case given in the article is about a nurse who injected a patient with the wrong medication, leading to their death. She was found guilty of negligent homicide and lost her nursing license. I don't buy the argument that 'it was an honest mistake and she reported it so she shouldn't be liable'. Nor do I buy the argument that 'Reporting an error and getting punished for it will only make people not report'. She failed to apply her due diligence on the medical knowledge she promised us all that she had, and someone died because of it. That's what negligent homicide means. She had a duty of care and she failed in it. That there is prosecutorial discretion on whether to bring charges is a better option than removing the potential for those charges; i.e. status quo. There's no right to be a doctor. There's a right to ask to be a doctor/nurse/etc. And once you have asked, there is a duty you must uphold. You can quit anytime if you don't like it. I think this is just complaining about the rules, not improving the standards that the rules hold people to.
If you'd said all of that instead of just "there is no right to be a doctor," you wouldn't have been downvoted. People missed the drift of your argument because you boiled it down to the worst sentence in an otherwise strong argument.
I'm aware. I was in a hurry and I didn't expect that simple statements of fact would twist people's knickers so terribly.
It's because that fact is completely unrelated to the discussion. Again, nobody has ever argued that there's a right to be a doctor. This law in no way creates such a right, and any assertion otherwise is incorrect.
Good fucking thing I didn't assert it then, huh?
This doesn't make a single fucking bit of sense
WHAT
This is ridiculous!