Woman Files Complaint After Doctor Tells Her She's Obese

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Pharmavixen

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The New Hampshire attorney general is investigating a Rochester doctor because a patient complained that he bluntly told her she needed to lose weight.

snip

The Board of Medicine would not comment on the case, but Vice President Kevin Costin said, "Physicians have to be professional with patients and remember everyone is an individual. You should not be inflammatory or degrading to anyone."

Read it here.
 

Pharmavixen

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OTOH, think of the emotional trauma carelessly inflicted by MDs when they tell their patients something they don't want to hear. I mean, when you tell a non-compliant diabetic that the way they're going, they could end up blind, legless, and on dialysis, that's rather unnecessarily graphic, no?

Surely lawsuits are next.
 

MaseratiGT

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Those two articles show entirely different viewpoints.

I agreed with the physician from reading the first article.

However, from the second article, the doctor lost my support. I agree with being forthright with patients, but hauling in ethnicity is beyond helping the patients.

Although the doctor DOES deny the allegations, he still loosely cites polls that he has seen - that African American men like that type of woman. If he is so up to date on his ethnic love relations studies, it's not a far jump for me to conclude that he probably could have said something along those lines. If someone were to accuse me of saying something racist, of which I never would, I wouldn't DREAM of bringing in outside knowledge to bolster their claims.

If he would have said something like that to me, I would have also brought charges against him.
 

Miami_med

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It's still BS. Being insulted is not a justification for a lawsuit. "Infliction of Emotional Distress" is largely a BS form of suit. Also, it's hard to argue that he could have done too much damage. The woman could have simply changed physicians if he hurt her so much. I think that we need to be really careful about letting physicians get sued for politically incorrect speach.
 
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If he would have said something like that to me, I would have also brought charges against him.

And you would have lost, just like this woman did. There is no real legal basis for suing somebody because you were verbally insulted, regardless of it's nature. But in any case I am not even convinced the doctor actually said those things. He could have said something and she heard something else.

This is another example of why I think we need general tort reform in this country. This woman should have paid his attorney fees after she lost. I'm sorry if it sounds harsh, but she should have toughened up and found another doctor, not waste tax money on a frivolous case.
 

MOHS_01

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:mad:
OTOH, think of the emotional trauma carelessly inflicted by MDs when they tell their patients something they don't want to hear. I mean, when you tell a non-compliant diabetic that the way they're going, they could end up blind, legless, and on dialysis, that's rather unnecessarily graphic, no?

Surely lawsuits are next.

NO, most definitely not. That potential is the reality of the situation; to believe otherwise is having your head in the sand. Our primary job is to educate -- we cannot sugar coat it to make things more palatable.
 
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:mad:

NO, most definitely not. That potential is the reality of the situation; to believe otherwise is having your head in the sand. Our primary job is to educate -- we cannot sugar coat it to make things more palatable.

I think the poster was being a bit sarcastic.
 

Tired

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It's still BS. Being insulted is not a justification for a lawsuit. "Infliction of Emotional Distress" is largely a BS form of suit. Also, it's hard to argue that he could have done too much damage. The woman could have simply changed physicians if he hurt her so much. I think that we need to be really careful about letting physicians get sued for politically incorrect speach.

I thought it said she filed a complaint with the state, not that she sued.
 

Pharmavixen

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:mad:

NO, most definitely not. That potential is the reality of the situation; to believe otherwise is having your head in the sand. Our primary job is to educate -- we cannot sugar coat it to make things more palatable.
Yeah, I was being ironic. My fault for the misunderstanding; I shoulda put in the :rolleyes:

This may not have been a lawsuit, but I can see one may happen. From Big Fat Blog:
We're building our fat culture and (dare I say it?) our fat heritage here, folks.
A sample from the "Fat Rights" movement, where people have borrowed jargon from feminism, the civil rights movement, gay rights, etc, to advocate "fat pride." You tell somebody to lose weight, you're oppressing them.
 

MOHS_01

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Sorry, missed the sarcasm... and I was having a "low blood sugar" moment.

You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry....
 

DrDre311

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Sorry, missed the sarcasm... and I was having a "low blood sugar" moment.

You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry....

Don't make me...hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm...hungry.
 

Dirt

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I thought it said she filed a complaint with the state, not that she sued.

I thought so too. He is probably a jackass, and she is probably a bit uptight, add some sensationalization by the press and whammo, you have a thread.




I love how people no longer compensate for their insufficiencies with a sports car, they use an American Flag instead.



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