Marked By Medicine

Voiceover: Every minute someone’s life takes a terrifying detour not down a dark alley, but into the sterile, bright halls of healing. They walk in, seeking care and find themselves plunged into a nightmare. Most malpractice claims in hospitals are related to surgical errors, whereas most claims for outpatient care, which accounts for more than half of the paid malpractice claims, are related to missed or late diagnosis. 

Now, before you raise a pitchfork at every white coat you see, let’s be clear this isn’t an indictment. It’s a revelation. Because the truth is, any provider, any nurse, any human being capable of brilliance is also capable of a mistake. This is about understanding why and using that knowledge to build a safer future for every patient who walks through those doors. 

Welcome to Scrubs and Subpoenas: Tales from the Witness Stand, a podcast where we’ll peel back the sterile sheets and delve into the real stories of medical malpractice. Each episode a cautionary tale, a blueprint for change. A reminder that even in the darkest corners of human error, there’s a light. The light of knowledge. The light of empathy. The light of a future where health care becomes not a gamble, but a guarantee. 

So, join us as we dissect the mistakes, illuminate the flaws, and ultimately learn to heal, not just bodies, but the very system itself. 

Jannah Amiel: Hello and welcome to another episode of Scrubs and Subpoenas: Tales from the Witness Stand. I am your host, Jannah Amiel, and joining me is Dr. Wendy Wright. Dr. Wright, how are you?  

Wendy Wright: I’m great. Thank you again for having me. I’m excited to be back today.  

JA: Absolutely. Thanks for joining me. I love when you do. This is great. Like this is such a fantastic time. 

I appreciate your time, and certainly our listeners appreciate your stories. For anyone who is tuning in for the very first time and has not heard any Scrubs and Subpoenas, one, we are happy to have you. And two, this is where we break down-break apart if you will-real medical malpractice cases that our expert faculty like Dr. Wendy Wright has actually served on. 

So, one thing that we like to do when we talk about these cases, of course, it’s from the perspective of, you know, like what happened, what can we learn from this? But we are always grounded in, as you heard in our intro, mistakes can happen to anybody, right? So, we always want to put that out there. We’re human. 

There’s two types of people, right? Those who have made the mistakes and those who will. And so, this is a really great opportunity for us not to criticize and point fingers and pass blame, but to understand what happened and take that so we can practice better. Is there anything you want to add to that, Dr. Wright?  

WW: I completely agree, and every time I am involved in one of these cases, I always say to myself, ‘You know, this could have been me and what am I going to take from this case that I can translate into a program like this? 

And also, what could I translate back into my clinic so that I am sure that I’m doing the best job I can do for the patients that I serve?’  

JA: Yeah, I think that’s a perfect way to frame it up. That’s perfect. How can we take this and apply it to actually what we do? I love that. So, with that said, I am ready to get into the story. 

I love hearing these. I love learning from them and really trying to understand like the big takeaways.  

WW: Well, you and I have talked about some big, huge cases, we’re going to make this one a little bit less big and less glamorous.  

JA: Okay. 

WW: I think there’s a lot of learnings to take away from this case.  

JA: Okay.  

WW: So, this case for me, I became involved in this case- 

I want to tell you, maybe somewhere in the vicinity of about 15 years ago. And in this case, I was asked to come on board to take a look at the care provided by a family nurse practitioner working in a rural community and taking care of a patient in her 20s. And just for the purposes of this audience, I’m changing the case up just enough so that nothing is being disclosed and that you wouldn’t be able to really figure out this patient. 

I think that’s really important for the nurse practitioner. So, the case goes something like this. The nurse practitioner sees a young woman in her 20s for a rash, and the rash is on her lower extremities, and she’s diagnosed as having a case of eczema. So, the nurse practitioner prescribes, as most of us do, a topical corticosteroid. And the corticosteroid is called mometasone, which if you look in the literature is really a high-potency topical corticosteroid. 

The instructions are to use this corticosteroid twice a day as needed.  

JA: Okay. 

WW: One large tube is dispensed and five refills are provided. Jump forward. This clinic is in an EHR system, so all the care is delivered through an electronic health record. The patient requests a refill six months later, after the initial visit, the nurse practitioner is given a request for a refill of that prescription, and the nurse practitioner refills that prescription again with one large tube and five refills. 

Patient has not been seen over the course of that year. I would say to you, you know, that’s not really unusual. For a case of eczema, most of us probably wouldn’t see this patient back on a repeated basis. But jump forward now, a year later and the patient comes in for a well visit and sees a physician colleague. 

And her chief complaint at that well visit is she’s got all these stretch marks all over her legs from her hips down to her feet, and she wants the physician to evaluate her. So, the physician evaluates her and she’s got striae, which all of us in the medical field know of as stretch marks. But they are literally from her hips down to her feet. 

Long story short, this patient has been using this high-potency topical corticosteroid twice a day for the last 1 year as a moisturizer. Now what’s the big deal? Well, if you look in the literature and you look at corticosteroids, corticosteroids are generally prescribed for a 2-week interval. And that, in general, we don’t get refills on them. 

Now, we recognize that people with conditions like eczema and psoriasis will often use them intermittently, and will use them over the course of the year. But the patient retains an attorney. And because the physician sent her off to dermatology, who said to her, ‘Your skin is so thin.’ I mean, if any of you have stretch marks on you, you know that generally stretch marks are not going to go away. 

If you’ve ever had a baby, you know that if you lose a lot of weight, you know that this happens. And so, this woman in her early 20s is now covered from the hips down with pretty significant striae that have no potential to go away. So, she retains an attorney and, and files a suit against the nurse practitioner for dispensing a drug and without really monitoring that drug. 

And so, this is where I come on board.  

JA: Oh my gosh. Okay. So, was she taking-I mean she was using it wrong it sounds like. But it was prescribed as what exactly? What was the actual prescription that they used? 

WW: Two times a day as needed. And her perception was- 

JA: I guess that is pretty wide open in that type of way. 

WW: That’s one large tube, which is many grams. And all of these- 

JA: Five refills! 

WW: Five refills. And so, what’s the big deal? You gave me the refills. You said I could use it as needed. So, that’s what I did. And I called in and no one told me, ‘Well, why are you where you use it? Why are you needing a refill on six tubes in the course of 6 months? 

JA: Yeah.  

WW: And so, what refill was given?  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: And so here we are now with deformities that truly are not going to go away.  

JA: Is there-okay. So, that’s something I never even thought about in the sense of how many times we, even as a patient, have something that’s as needed. And now that you said that out loud, which is kind of wild thinking about how long I’ve been a nurse, now that you say that out loud, I feel like that is left open to interpretation. 

So, I’m thinking of a bunch of things right now, Dr. Wright. Is it as needed for up until this amount of time should have been the right way and-  

WW: Absolutely. If you look in your prescribing databases and if our listeners do, generally you’ll see up to 2 weeks and we even go as far as saying do not occlude- 

JA: Yeah.  

WW: Use as needed for up to 2 weeks. 

And so, that is generally what should be written on a prescription for a corticosteroid, particularly one that is considered to be high-potency. Now, we haven’t even got into the issue that high-potency corticosteroids use to this degree, because you figure if she’s got steroid striae from hips to toes, she used a significant amount of corticosteroids. So, then you need to be thinking, ‘Well, is there some systemic absorption?’ 

Of course there is. What impact does that have on HPA axis suppression? What impact does that have on her bones? That wasn’t even any of the contention. The contention of this case was you gave me a drug, you told me I could use it, and now I’ve got this side effect of this drug that will never go away. 

And I’m a 20-year-old who has no recourse to fix this abnormality that was covered by the drug.  

JA: Did she have any, like, stomach issues with, like, adrenal glands? I kind of think about that first thing.  

WW: None that we are aware of. It was more just the thinning of the skin that occurs with repeated corticosteroid use. We often talk about never use corticosteroids, particularly a medium- or high-potency on your face, because it can thinning of the skin and striae. 

And it’s a known entity. It’s not like this isn’t a known entity, but the real reason I wanted to bring up this case, really, because it’s not really that glamorous. But how often do we all come in on a Monday morning to 100 refill requests coming in from the pharmacy?  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: And I often joke when I talk about EHRs because when you stay a luxury hotel, the less the luxury hotels are no longer as attractive. 

Once you have an access to be able to hit approve, send, it becomes very easy to do this, and I know that when I walk in on a Monday morning, there are about six nurse practitioners, we’re all banging through all these prescription refills because if we don’t, we’re going to start getting some calls from patients who are like, ‘Where is my prescription refill?’ 

JA: Yeah.  

WW: So nature makes it incredibly easy to sell prescriptions, but it makes it so easy that I would say to you, and we don’t always do due diligence. And when I say due diligence, I am checking to see when the last time that patient has been seen. Are we checking to see how many refills has this patient had over the course of this, you know, 6 month mark. 

And so, I think what’s really important to get-that the takeaway from here really be that we have to make sure that we’re doing due diligence on these EHRs and not just hitting refills. This comes up a lot, too, in the world of asthma, where people are requesting their inhalers and it gets really easy. But technically, a well-controlled patient with asthma should only need one rescue inhaler in a year. 

And if we’re not checking those things, it really sets us up for some liability.  

JA: And I’m playing-I’m kind of playing a game here, but is there any responsibility on the pharmacy or the pharmacist to say, like, ‘I got this request for, you know, a refill or I’m going to refill this medication, but hey, this patient had this big old tube and all these additional refills, so why am I giving more?’ 

Is there a responsibility to call and say, ‘Hey, nurse practitioner so-and-so, why are we doing this already?’  

WW: I mean, sometimes I would say to you that there are responsibilities with the pharmacist, but you know what? They’re as busy as we are.  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: And how do they know that this isn’t for something like a psoriasis? Which the skin, it tends to be thicker with psoriasis. 

I mean, people will use it more often. I would say to you that while there are legal responsibilities, I’m not convinced that the pharmacist was really in a position or really should have been held at all liable for that.  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: Now, what if I prescribed the wrong dose of a drug and the pharmacist had filled it? Sure.  

JA: Right. 

WW: That is legally there. There’s a case out there of a cardiologist who prescribed the drug. It was two times that-so, it was a handwritten script.  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: It was one drug. When the pharmacist filled it, even though it was two times greater than the dose of what the pharmacist filled, because the pharmacist didn’t read the prescription accurately. 

And so, too high of a dose, both the cardiologist and the pharmacist paid out in that malpractice case. So, there are places certainly where pharmacy is liable or at least could raise the suspicion. I’m not sure that that’s the case. I think it’s just really important that before we fill scripts- 

JA: Yeah. 

WW: We take 30 seconds. Does this patient have an appointment and have they been seen in the last year? 

Because legally, we shouldn’t be filling a script for a patient who has not been seen in a year.  

JA: That’s an important point.  

WW: So, that’s an important point, too. Are we looking at how frequent is this patient filling this prescription? I maintain we do it with benzodiazepines. Why are we not doing it with other drugs that have risk as well. 

JA: Yeah.  

WW: And so, I think that that really brings up a point about these EHR systems and how simple they make it to fill it, prescribe action when maybe we ought not to be.  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: And opioids are the same. I mean you get these requests for opioids to benzos and cough syrup, it’s like antibiotics. I get a refill request from a pharmacy for a prescription of an antibiotic. 

It’s like, why am I filling an antibiotic? Why are they-why are we not initiating that?  

JA: Right, right.  

WW: I’m not going to fill out a course of doxy because the pharmacist asked me to write it. I need to know what you are taking it for. So, it really brings up a point of the importance of us doing that due diligence before we write any type of prescriptions. 

JA: Yes. And I’m thinking about too, like, I don’t know, there’s so many different EHRs today, I’m sure. I mean, that must exist, especially now that we are like in this very virtual world of telehealth, but aren’t there? And again, I’m kind of playing like, are there safeguards? I remember, just like when you’re taking meds out of the Pyxis and it gives you like a little alert, like, are you sure? 

Are you sure this is the med that you want to take? Do we have that type of technology today to help us? Because there was something that you said, Dr. Wright. You said you come in on a Monday and you have all of these refills and you have all of these requests. And I think that there is a part and I wonder what you think about this of like, the NP is so frickin overwhelmed, right? 

And like, how does that play into the mistakes that happen?  

WW: Like, I think it plays a huge it I think it’s huge. We talk about this every single day in my clinic. We get over 2000 portal messages in a given day. The phone, outgoing and incoming calls are over a thousand each way in and out each day. 

And then you’ve got the refills coming in from the pharmacy. You’ve got patients, you know, it’s overwhelming and all while you’re trying to see patients and think through the work that you’re doing. So, the purpose of having this conversation with you today is so that NPs can say, ‘I need to slow down.’ 

JA: Yeah. 

WW: I need to look-and one of the things that happened in my system, I want to say to you, it was about 6 or 7 years ago. 

I was on these e-results. When I bring them up, up in the right corner, it tells me the patient’s allergies. It tells me the last time the patient was seen in my clinic. It tells me if they’ve got any future prescription, appointments on the box. So, it gives me some good information, at least from a starting point. 

But it doesn’t tell me how many times this patient has filled that script in the last year. And we’re all working the box, right? It’s not like these are only my patient right? I’m filling scripts for 11 nurse practitioners that are in my clinic, many of whom may be on vacation that day.  

JA: Oh my gosh.  

WW: So, it just really brings up that I want people listening to this podcast to know that we’re seeing that prescribing errors are becoming very high up, depending upon- 

I’ve heard people say it’s now become the first or second reason for NPs to be sued. Other literature says third or fourth position for an NP to be sued. But these are not unusual. And you asked, “Are there stop gaps there?” 

JA: Yeah.  

WW: Yes. There is a drug interaction checker that comes up, but there would be no stop button, right? 

Because it wasn’t like it interacted with anything. And in my EHR-I talk about driving home at night and driving home and not remembering that I stopped at a stop sign. We get so many warnings that pop up that people blow through these warnings like, you go through the stop sign and you don’t even recollect it. You know you stopped, but you get home and you’re like, ‘Did I stop at that stop sign?’ 

The same is true with EHR. We need to be slowing down, doing due diligence and I often say to my staff, ‘Just because you see the whites of my eyes doesn’t mean that I’m open for dialogue.’ You. need tolet me think and if you have a question, just I will get back to you. But I need to think through my prescribing. 

And if I can give one other bit of advice that I say all the time when I’m speaking on malpractice prevention is I never write a script for a patient when I’m in the room with them, because when I’m in the room, they continue to talk.  

JA: Oh. 

WW: And I go out. I want to look at it, double check. How do I prescribe this? 

Because I don’t always remember exactly the way. And I want to double check things and I want to write the prescription to the pharmacy ‘use no longer than 2 weeks. If 2 weeks is or longer is needed, consult your healthcare provider or call in the office.’ Something so that the next time someone goes to fill this, there is a warning in that patient instruction. 

Because when the pharmacist sends us back those requests, it holds on to the message that I wrote in the instruction the last time. And that can be a toggle to the next person filling that, hey, maybe this person is overusing the benozs. Yes, maybe they’re overusing the corticosteroid.  

JA: Yeah. You know, you say something really important, and I know that there are listeners going, ‘How do I slow down? 

I have 8000 patients. I have low staffing. You know, I don’t have all the help that I need. This is a crazy week.’ Like I get it.  

WW: Yes.  

JA: I have to slow down. How like-how are you doing it on the days that you feel like, okay, this is way too much now. 

WW: I wish I had a great answer for you. 

I’m 32 years in and there are days where I just have to say, ‘Wendy, you’re not going to finish your work today.’ I remember as a new grad-I was probably 3 or 4 months in and this physician came and he’s like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ And I’m sobbing like a baby. And he’s like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ 

And I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m never going to get it done.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t know when.’ And he said, ‘I don’t either. But the day is going to end and you will get done. Take deep breaths, walk away.’ And then what I do is I just call it a day. I do the best I can, and what I do is I go home, I’ll have dinner, I’ll take a breath. 

I’m in a new frame of mind and I’ll log back in, and then I’ll just send out what I need to send out, as long as obviously it didn’t have to be done that minute. But a lot of times I bring these home and I say I have to walk.  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: Like, don’t book an appointment with me at 7:00 at night because you don’t want me at 7:00 at night because I’ve been in that clinic since 6 am. 

JA: Right, right.  

WW: So, sometimes I just hit that professional wall where I just need to say, ‘Wendy, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You’re just going to have to go home and do an hour at home.’ So, be it. If that’s what I need to do to be safe, absolutely. And and to make sure that I’m not missing things. 

And I know that no one wants to hear this, but for me, I don’t do any of my labs when I’m in the clinic. I do them Sunday morning. It’s my-I sit with my coffee. I can think, there’s no one pumping me and I’ll do a couple of hours where I can burn through patients labs and put them in accordance with their medical history, send them out the letter. 

And that way I walk in on Monday with a completely normal, empty inbox. For me, that’s how I maintain my sanity. I know people don’t want to work at home. I know that they find that unpalatable. For me, I would rather do that than be so stressed at the clinic that I’m there until seven and I’m making mistakes because all I want to do is go. 

JA: Yeah, and that’s not worth it. 

That’s a really worst case scenario there. Something really bad happens. So, this sounds like-feel like this is a tricky one. This sounds like a medical error. Kind of like straightforward in the sense that this script wasn’t written correctly. I’m like going back to when I was in school. That wasn’t a complete script. Is that accurate? Is that is that really what it came down to in this case?  

WW: That is really what it came down to in this case. Is this defensible, right? 

Is this defensible in that, could you say that the average nurse practitioner- 

JA: Yeah.  

WW: With the same level of education would have done the same thing in that same scenario. And that is what we all look at when we go to either defend the case or when we work for the plaintiff side. Is this something the nurse practitioner with the same level of education would they have written the script the same way and could this have been avoided?  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: Could this have been avoided?  

JA: So, I’m going to guess that you were on the side that said, ‘Well, we should have had a more complete script. That’s what we would have done.’  

WW: So, this was the first case of my career where I actually took the case on behalf of a plaintiff. 

JA: Wow.  

WW: And, you know, as people are listening to this, they’re thinking, I can’t even believe you would testify.  

JA: [jokingly] Traitor! 

WW: But, here’s what I say. First of all, you want to show that if you do this work that you are willing to work both sides of the coin, there is evidence that this could have been done differently. And I guess on my end, I would want someone to pay if that were my child who was disfigured, it was not going to go away. 

And, you know, so at the end of the day, I did work on behalf of the plaintiff. It killed me. But everyone in my world said, ‘You’ve got to come up somewhere.’ So, when I hop on the stand, they’ll say, ‘What percent do you work for the plaintiff?’ Right now it’s about 80/20.  

JA: Oh, wow.  

WW: And it’s hard for me to take a plaintiff case. 

It must be very egregious-  

JA: Yeahh. 

WW:I order for me to take it, and I-because I make mistakes. I make mistakes every day. And I just pray, ‘Please, Lord, don’t let anything happen’ because we’re human, right? And so I understand. But I also believe that sometimes bad things happen that could have been prevented. And again, I hope that people have listened to what we’ve talked about and have taken away a few points. 

Slow down.  

JA: Yes. 

WW: Double check when they were last seen, how often they’re filling these scripts, and make sure that you give patient instructions. If a drug calls for stopping point then-and we see this a lot. Now, if I can use the drugs for obesity for instance- 

JA: Oh. 

WW: Here’s the dose. But you only use it for 1 month. At the end of the month you call in and we go up on the dose if you’re doing well. 

So, taking 30 seconds to write that instruction once a week for 4 weeks on a script. And that way we’ve got that stopping point. So, when I see that refill come in, oh signal to me is that 4 weeks is up, where do we go next. Yes, that matters.  

JA: And can I ask another like clinical question around that prescription? Would it have been appropriate to just given her that one tube for that, that one time? 

And if you need more, well, then you got to come back to see me because it is such a high dose. And they-we know these are different effects. Is that appropriate or inappropriate to do? 

WW: Totally appropriate.  

JA: Okay.  

WW: When I write a corticosteroid I write one tube, zero weeks.  

JA: Okay.  

WW: Just like when I write an asthma inhaler, I say one inhaler, zero refills. 

And then if you need more, it’s a signal to me ding, ding, ding. Do I need to reevaluate? Do I need to step up their care? Is there something different that we need to be doing?  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: And I encourage people, you know, with hypertensive drugs I’ll often get 90 days with a refill if people have been stable. But I never give more than 6 months of any drug at a time. 

Even if that patient has been on this drug forever, i.e., hypertensive drugs, because I want an opportunity to make sure that that patient is being followed on an evidence-based guideline perspective. Right. So, they’re hypertensive, at minimum, they should be seen twice a year. And so, limiting the quantity allows me that check point with our patient. 

JA: That’s-I think that’s smart. That’s good advice. So, can I ask what happened in this this case. Like what the outcome was.  

WW: Yes. This was over a $700,000 payout.  

JA: Wow. And so, payout that comes-the only one-because we’ve talked about other cases where there’s several people named in the case. Is was this a case where it was just the FNP in this instance? 

WW: So I know that the FNP and the business were sued. I don’t know how the split happened, but I do know that it was over 700,000. The hard part about a lot of these cases is that I am never privy to what happens at end, because a lot of times cases settle out and we are prohibited from being told what happen. 

Now, sometimes I can convince the attorneys like on the sly, ‘Can you give me a sense of what happened?’ But I don’t always-I know that they settled and I knew there was a payout, but I don’t always get the amount because there is a nondisclosure with the attorneys.  

JA: Okay, I understand that. Can you just speak on that for one second? 

How come some cases settle like that before they even get to like an actual trial? I think is that the right term? How come they just kind of settle quickly and some don’t? They really go for a long time.  

WW: Well, I think it depends upon the amount of money that is requested out of the gate. I just looked at a case and I said to the attorney, ‘Listen, you need to make this case go away.’ 

There’s no way there was a defective piece of equipment. You need to just make this go away. Everyone’s readily admitting the equipment broke. This person was harmed. Make it go away. Because the amount of money it takes to take these cases to court is well over $100,000. And so, they have to figure out, is this worth all of the money we’re going to spend to get all of these experts deposed? 

But I mean, if someone comes at you and says, ‘I want 150 million,’ those cases are going to drag out fairly long.  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: Because we’re going to be bringing in all these experts and most states now have what I call a tribunal or a mandated mediation session before the court case goes to trial. And every state’s different. But I remember working one in Maine where there were, I think it was three physicians, a nurse practitioner, pharmacist, PA who all sat on this tribunal, and you had to present your case before the case ever went to trial. 

And then if this tribunal said there’s no medical liability here, it was gone. It was gone. But if they said, you know, something happened, then they have the right to take it forward to trying to unburden the courts.  

JA: Yeah.  

WW: But my statistic that I’m always taught by attorneys is about 1 in 10 make it to trial.  

JA: Oh, wow. 

WW: Out of ten cases-these are some statistics they told me-out of ten people who go to an attorney and say, ‘I want to file a malpractice case,’ five will have no merit. So 50%, nothing you can do there. It’s not going anywhere of that size. Three to four of them will merit but a couple of those, the attorney will say, ‘It’s not worth our while. The money isn’t going to be paid enough to go forward.’ 

But then the remainder 2 or 3 will either mediate or one will go to trial. That’s generally how it those cases play out, at least from the attorneys that I’ve talked to over the years.  

JA: That’s very interesting. We hear so much about medical malpractice cases. 

And I think it sometimes gives us like this false idea that every time something happens or maybe happen,ed it always goes straight to trial. That’s a case. That’s a case. That’s the case. Like everybody thinks they have a case in that type of way.  

WW: You know what? I’ve been doing this for 27 years. Over 150 cases, and I’ve gone to trial 3 or 4 times. 

JA: Wow.  

WW: It is very rare to go to trial. And in this case I didn’t go to trial. It settled out.  

JA: Wow.  

WW: And so, I don’t get to get into that courtroom very often. And I think that it’s unusual for a case to make it all the way into the courtroom.  

JA: Yes, absolutely. This was a really good story, a really good lesson. 

We cannot hear enough: slow down. I’m going to have to be honest. We cannot hear enough about really taking the time to be thoughtful and intentional and hang on before you do that thing, because there could be really real consequences for you and the patient.  

WW: Of course.  

JA: Wow.  

WW: And I think that’s a good take away. Slow down, double tap, double checks, do due diligence. 

And if I can come back in the future, I would love to not necessarily talk with you about a case that goes into a courtroom, but how about a case that goes in front of the Board of Nursing?  

JA: Oh! 

WW: That goes in front of a board in an employer university, for instance, because not all of these end up going into a malpractice trial, but maybe they end up at the Board of Nursing due to complaints. 

And I’ve done a number of cases in front of the Boards of Nursing as well. Maybe we could take that route, because I think those are some learnings that can happen as well.  

JA: I would love to do that. Listen, I remember being a nursing student in the very end, and we had to go before the Board to watch when those hearings happened and where there was a nurse that came before and had to present something and that was one of the most impactful things, I think, and really realizing like, oh, there are some consequences we didn’t think about, you know, in this type of way. 

WW: Absolutely. There are a bunch of people you never want to meet on your front door: the Board of Nursing, the IRS, the FDA, and Medicare, like those are, you know, those are some people that you want never showing up or having to appear in front of. And I think that we can learn some lessons, not all end up in the courtroom, but the Board of Nursing, in my opinion, is just as scary. 

It’s your life.  

JA: Heck yeah. I would love to talk about that. Dr. Wright, thank you so much. I always appreciate your time on these stories. It is such a good lesson, such a real reminder. And also, the technology can’t save us all the time. It’s got to be us. It’s got to be us to make sure that we’re having that safeguard. 

WW: I appreciate that.  

JA: Thank you all for tuning and we hope you enjoyed this series in today’s podcast.  

WW: I absolutely did.  

JA: And if you want to hear more, check us out. We’ve got new episodes dropping every Friday. And till next time, bye bye for now. 

Voiceover: Thank you for listening and learning with Scrubs and Subpoenas: Tales from the Witness Stand presented by Fitzgerald Health Education Associates. Please rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast, and for more NP resources, visit FHEA.com. Join us again next time as we dissect more medical malpractice cases.