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I've been looking for a new psychiatrist and have expanded my search to more urban areas. I came across one who sounded more personable and only takes self-pay, which interested me. He advertises himself as a "residency-trained psychiatrist."
I looked him on the Board of Medicine site and found that he was kicked out of two psychiatric residencies. One time for not showing up to major portions of the training and one time for a compulsive habit of watching pornography in front of other students.
He has only been in practice for several years but he has several reprimands from the state and is required to be in therapy in order to practice psychiatry.
This is the most extreme case I've come across of someone who is still practicing. Should he be allowed to call himself a psychiatrist if he never completed a residency? And isn't it awfully audacious to call yourself "residency trained"? Not to mention stupid. The only reason I looked him up was because he advertised himself as residency trained and I thought: why would someone mention something that is a given? I could take canoe lessons at Harvard and call myself Harvard-trained, I suppose.
I came across another psychiatrist I had been considering who has been reprimanded 5 separate times (over a period of 12 years) for prescribing herself Ambien and Aderall and also giving controlled substances to family members. Each time she is ordered to go to an inpatient detox program. How is that she gets so many second chances?
My former psychiatrist had his license revoked entirely. He was in a drunk driving accident and also found guilty of prescribing himself Ambien. If I had reported him to the state, he would have also been guilty of medical abandonment (he left the practice without notice--this was years before DUI). He was supposed to report to jail for 30 days (it was 6 months with most suspended) but fled to Pakistan instead. From what I could tell his license was revoked for not finishing the inpatient treatment he was supposed to do and for fleeing the country--not for the prescribing or drunk driving, which given the other state reprimands they would have probably given him a pass on.
The more I look around for psychiatrists, the more I keep coming up with these notices on the Board of Medicine site. What's weird is that the only inpatient facility for psychiatry near me is designed specifically for medical professionals and in several of the cases I found (including the one involving my former psychiatrists), the psychiatrists were referred there. The program specializes in helping people re-license and dealing with "the advanced defense mechanisms" of medical professionals.
It just seems pretty awful to me that these are the psychiatrists working in my area and that they keep getting so many second chances. And it seems pretty backward that the only inpatient facility in my town is specifically designed for doctors and helping them keep their licenses.
Part of me thinks this goes back to the debate I was having in another thread about how much of an investment a medical education is. It seems to me that once people have gone through medical school and residency they're treated as a very valuable product that can't be sacked no matter how poor the product. If you think of a doctor as a business and realize that you put about $300,000 (this is a guess, including undergraduate, not including opportunity costs obviously) into one and that there aren't many available, I can see why state boards are both sympathetic to the doctor for the investment the doctors have made and to the public for a lack of other doctors if you were to sack all the bad ones.
How many more people would be doctors, including psychiatrists, if they never had thoughts such as: Can I afford medical school? It's too big of a risk. What will I do will all that debt?
Instead we have eager beavers from foreign countries willing to fill spots that Americans aren't or we have trust-fund kids who somehow squeak through medical school and don't even complete a residency.
I wrote before that there would be more competition at the market-place level if you had tax-funded medical education. But I recently learned that there's more competition in Sweden at the medical school level because the education is free (it's also free for and open to competition from international students).
So, we both have less competition in the market (a dearth of doctors in psychiatry) and in applying to medical school (the pool is only of those who can afford debt).
If our system were more competitive would we have twice-kicked-out-residency, having completed no residency, under state-ordered therapy "psychiatrists"? Before doing this research I didn't even know you could be licensed as a doctor without a residency, but I found out you can depending on the state.
I see people on this board worried about competition from NPs. You should apparently be worried about doctors who aren't really doctors, as well.
I looked him on the Board of Medicine site and found that he was kicked out of two psychiatric residencies. One time for not showing up to major portions of the training and one time for a compulsive habit of watching pornography in front of other students.
He has only been in practice for several years but he has several reprimands from the state and is required to be in therapy in order to practice psychiatry.
This is the most extreme case I've come across of someone who is still practicing. Should he be allowed to call himself a psychiatrist if he never completed a residency? And isn't it awfully audacious to call yourself "residency trained"? Not to mention stupid. The only reason I looked him up was because he advertised himself as residency trained and I thought: why would someone mention something that is a given? I could take canoe lessons at Harvard and call myself Harvard-trained, I suppose.
I came across another psychiatrist I had been considering who has been reprimanded 5 separate times (over a period of 12 years) for prescribing herself Ambien and Aderall and also giving controlled substances to family members. Each time she is ordered to go to an inpatient detox program. How is that she gets so many second chances?
My former psychiatrist had his license revoked entirely. He was in a drunk driving accident and also found guilty of prescribing himself Ambien. If I had reported him to the state, he would have also been guilty of medical abandonment (he left the practice without notice--this was years before DUI). He was supposed to report to jail for 30 days (it was 6 months with most suspended) but fled to Pakistan instead. From what I could tell his license was revoked for not finishing the inpatient treatment he was supposed to do and for fleeing the country--not for the prescribing or drunk driving, which given the other state reprimands they would have probably given him a pass on.
The more I look around for psychiatrists, the more I keep coming up with these notices on the Board of Medicine site. What's weird is that the only inpatient facility for psychiatry near me is designed specifically for medical professionals and in several of the cases I found (including the one involving my former psychiatrists), the psychiatrists were referred there. The program specializes in helping people re-license and dealing with "the advanced defense mechanisms" of medical professionals.
It just seems pretty awful to me that these are the psychiatrists working in my area and that they keep getting so many second chances. And it seems pretty backward that the only inpatient facility in my town is specifically designed for doctors and helping them keep their licenses.
Part of me thinks this goes back to the debate I was having in another thread about how much of an investment a medical education is. It seems to me that once people have gone through medical school and residency they're treated as a very valuable product that can't be sacked no matter how poor the product. If you think of a doctor as a business and realize that you put about $300,000 (this is a guess, including undergraduate, not including opportunity costs obviously) into one and that there aren't many available, I can see why state boards are both sympathetic to the doctor for the investment the doctors have made and to the public for a lack of other doctors if you were to sack all the bad ones.
How many more people would be doctors, including psychiatrists, if they never had thoughts such as: Can I afford medical school? It's too big of a risk. What will I do will all that debt?
Instead we have eager beavers from foreign countries willing to fill spots that Americans aren't or we have trust-fund kids who somehow squeak through medical school and don't even complete a residency.
I wrote before that there would be more competition at the market-place level if you had tax-funded medical education. But I recently learned that there's more competition in Sweden at the medical school level because the education is free (it's also free for and open to competition from international students).
So, we both have less competition in the market (a dearth of doctors in psychiatry) and in applying to medical school (the pool is only of those who can afford debt).
If our system were more competitive would we have twice-kicked-out-residency, having completed no residency, under state-ordered therapy "psychiatrists"? Before doing this research I didn't even know you could be licensed as a doctor without a residency, but I found out you can depending on the state.
I see people on this board worried about competition from NPs. You should apparently be worried about doctors who aren't really doctors, as well.