Patients recount medical horrors under care of military doctors, with no legal recourse

[left-of-center2012]

A Green Beret’s terminal Stage IV cancer. An airmen’s routine appendectomy turns fatal. A judge advocate general suffers multiple miscarriages. These are samples of medical cases gone awry under the care of military doctors.

But it doesn’t stop there: Patients and their families aren’t allowed to sue for medical malpractice. A special legal shield, known as the Feres Doctrine, blocks military servicemembers and their relatives from seeking recourse in court.

Alexis Witt painfully recounted to lawmakers the 2003 death of her husband, Air Force Staff Sgt. Dean Patrick Witt, following a surgical procedure.

Following Witt’s appendectomy at Travis Air Force Base in California, a nurse administered a lethal dose of fentanyl and incorrectly inserted a breathing tube into his esophagus. Witt subsequently suffered from respiratory and cardiac arrest and died after being left in a vegetative state for three months.

Witt’s wife said the same nurse was linked to at least three other deaths, including one before her husband died. “If the appropriate action had been taken on this nurse during her first lethal, negligent episode, Dean would still be alive today,” Witt told lawmakers.

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/patients-recount-medical-horrors-under-care-of-military-doctors-with-no-legal-recourse-1.579146

[ZZenith]

1. Grew up going to military dentists.

I still get sweaty at the thought of having to get a routine cleaning.

[Skittles]

2. I went to many military dentists and never had a problem

[ZZenith]

3. You got lucky then.

[Skittles]

4. or maybe you were unlucky

hey, that pic, I had that Jimi poster on my wall for 25 years

[ZZenith]

5. I might think that but for the preponderance of anecdotal evidence I've heard from

others in my position. We were re-stationed a lot and it was common knowledge amongst all the brats I knew that the military ran the Marquis de Sade School of Dentistry. Maybe it was different in different branches or there’s since been improvement. They were, to a person, completely unconcerned with the experience of the patient when I was in the chair. Modern dentists are like angels bathed in compassionate light by comparison but my inner child screams through every visit many decades later.

Glad you didn’t have the same experience and I am glad you honored Jimi like that!

[Susan Calvin]

6. Oh dentist was the first thing I thought.

I know it's trivial compared to the things that happened in the OP, but I remember feeling like a guinea pig.

[ZZenith]

7. You have my sympathy, Susan Calvin!

[Susan Calvin]

8. .