I've worked in an ER for about 10 years. I've kicked out probably thousands of malingerers. NONE OF THEM COMMITTED SUICIDE.
I've had patients commit suicide. None of these were patients I suspected or knew were malingering. My first patient who killed herself I knew she was going to do it. The problem was I knew she was going to do it months to years down the road. That wasn't enough to allow me to keep her committed. I remember when she was discharged I told a nurse I worked with that I wasn't scared she'd die within weeks but I said something to the effect of "6 months? That's where I'd be getting scared." She killed herself 6 months later and I was not her outpatient doctor.
Every other patient I've had that committed suicide were people in a zone where there was no way I could tell. E.g. I met a guy once, didn't see him again for over a year, he didn't follow up as recommended, then I find out later on he committed suicide.
I've also had accidental death patients where the patient overdosed. Again like the above it was out of my control. E.g. a patient openly tells me he doesn't want treatment, wants to continue drug abuse, walks out of my office then I find out months later the person died of an accidental overdose.
I haven't been sued yet at least as of now. I've had idiot complaints against me. E.g. I terminated a patient who was on Clozapine because he wouldn't get the labs done, then call me up and ask for Clozapine and I told him I couldn't get him the meds and he needed to go to the ER because they were the only people who at that point could get an immediate lab done. Add to the idiocy that at that time he was already terminated for 3 months, so I also asked him why he wasn't calling his current psychiatrist as I no longer treated him. So the board complaint was literally for me following the rules with Clozapine for a patient where I had no treatment relationship, and YES-I did terminate him per standard of care. I gave a termination letter via certified mail with 3 referrals and he did have an established psychiatrist at the time he called me. Add to the insult when a person complains to the board they have to check off a box as to what the doctor did wrong. They checked "other" and wrote in "because he doesn't care."
Ahem, not caring? That doesn't merit a board complaint per existing guidelines (and by the way I do care. If I didn't care I wouldn't have bothered to tell him for over 2 hours over the course of 6 phone calls that I couldn't prescribe Clozapine and he needed to go to the ER).
So far 3 complaints against me with a board but all 3 of them tossed out. First one was I was accused of being the head of a multinational conspiracy controlling sexy supermodels to control the world. My nurses were the alleged muscle, where if the super models didn't submit sexually they nurses would come in and make them do the dirty work. The state board even apologized to me that they were investigating me and told me to not even worry but that they had to investigate me because I was running an inpatient unit, and by law any sexual complaint in an inpatient unit had to be investigated. The second complaint was the one I mentioned above. The 3rd complaint some lady kept begging for benzos and I said no cause of the addiction risk.
Frankly for the 2 non-sex conspiracy complaints I was bugged they even investigated it. It was apparent from the surface these were bogus. I cannot prescribe Clozapine if the person doesn't do the labs, and legally there's no merit to complaining against a doctor where a treatment relationship doesn't exist. So if that's the case why did the board even waste time on it? They should've tossed it out before even doing an investigation. The 3rd complaint lady did later develop a benzo addiction. I found out cause she later showed up to an addiction clinic where I worked asking for help for benzo addiction.
(The irony being that if I could somehow be the head of a multinational conspiracy to control the world though super-models that actually sounds pretty cool, but I don't know how to get that to realistically happen as a physician.
)