The one time in my career that I was sued (unsuccessfully) for "malpractice", it was over what initially presented as a SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) case.
It took an entire team of medical examiners six months to determine that they could not determine what caused the baby's death.
I believe that if the initial investigators on the scene had used a "checklist", they would have ascertained that the baby's Mother accidentally suffocated her infant while dozing with the child on the couch.
The parents wound up suing every physician whose name was ever on the child's medical chart.
It might have saved a lot of good people a whole lot of time and money, if baby's death had been identified as what it was . . . in this case, not a SIDS case, but an accidental death.
According to WFMY-TV, the North Carolina medical examiner's office says it is dropping a standardized checklist for suspicious infant deaths after learning the information in those reports must be made public.
The Charlotte Observer reported Saturday that the change in policy comes after the attorney general issued an opinion that the information in those reports would be public.
I left a comment on the story:
The Attorney General is a moron (Big Surprise) because such investigative check-lists should be kept private unless they are used as supporting evidence of foul play in Court.
And the Medical Examiner seems to have forgotten that her FIRST obligation is to the DEAD CHILD.
Privacy should STOP at Murder's front door.
If you're wondering, my opinion is not just about being sued (as horrible as that was, it was not as bad as being called a liar by the liars running Randolph Hospital - for being sued for "malpractice" was about what I do - being sued for "libel" was about who I am).
It would have been nice, way back when I worked in Asheboro, at Randolph Medical Associates, and served on Randolph County's Child Fatality Task Force, if we had had such checklists when local medical examiners were making determinations on the deaths of toddlers (i.e. children over the age of one), and tended to lump everything in with SIDS.
It was a quick & dirty "trashcan" diagnosis, as opposed to a diagnosis of exclusion.
Indeed, I believe one of the several reasons I was fired had to do with the fact that I questioned the Medical Examiner's determinations - and asked too many uncomfortable (in one such case, for one of my "colleagues") questions.
Twelve years later terms of child advocacy, it appears NOTHING has changed in North Carolina.
Stepping backwards and covering tail is all our leaders know how to do.
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