A Problem With Denial and Red Herrings

In my previous post I linked to an article about Jeffrey McCallister, a nurse who sexually assaulted "sedated" patients.  I did some more research about it and came across the following from the NYDaily.  When I looked through the comments I found a comment which is so strange I had to comment on it.  Apparently the commenter is in denial about what medical care entails these days and instead focuses on something else...

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Former Oregon nurse pleads guilty to sexually abusing ER patients - NY Daily News

FMD MEDINA

4 days ago

he's white. he'll get 18 months in a minimum security facility. he will be released in 6 months and wear an ankle bracelet. he'll write a book which becomes a bestseller and retire to a country where abusing women is not only legal but encouraged.

if he were black, he would be beaten every day to and from his trial, sentenced to life with no hope of parole and shanked to death while in prison.

the life of a black man.

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So now we have a person who has changed the sexual assaults into a race comment.  Come on people.  The problem isn't that Jeffrey McCallister is white.  This male nurse, ominously a former police officer, is a criminal if proven guilty.  He will be sentenced according to the law.  The real problem is the use of a drug which actually ENCOURAGES lawless acts.  How many patients are tortured using this drug?  Just how many patients are sexually assaulted under sedation?  Who would know due to the nature of Versed?  The real problem is that the medical field covers up this kind of abuse.  I guess they figure that as long as the patient can''t remember being violated, then there is no harm.  Is this the mindset YOU want from medical people?  Versed not only fries your brain, it also facilitates rape, sodomy, and oral sex along with the routine torture patients are subjected to because of Versed/Midazolam.

This commenter, FMD Medina completely disregards the issues and focuses on the shade of the (alleged) perps epidermis, and uses completely fabricated scenarios.  I find it so strange that EVERYTHING is about skin tone these days.  Sure, ignore the problem with what the guy did and the hospital administration who allegedly facilitated, ignored and otherwise allowed Jeffrey to do what he did, and instead whine about the color of his skin.  So many things these days, real problems, are swept under the rug in favor of discussing color.  It's maddening.  It doesn't matter what Jeffrey McCallister did, it only matters that his skin color will get him off the hook?  Will it?  I seem to remember a cute little white guy, with the same first name as this nurse, getting shanked in prison by a black guy...  Jeffrey Dahmer didn't get any special treatment because he was a small relatively attractive white guy, now did he?  Who cares what color Jeffrey McCallister is?  What he did and the people who allowed the abuse to continue should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  I don't care what color they are.

PS I believe there is a law that criminals can't profit from their crimes by writing books and keeping the proceeds.  So even that argument is specious.  Plus, if it's legal to make crime pay by writing memoirs, then that avenue would also be available to black criminals.

PPS  Just in;  McCallister has pleaded guilty and received a negotiated 15 year, un-appealable prison sentence.  He also has a 5 year post prison security sentence bringing the total to 20 years.  He will register as a sex offender.  So when he gets out of prison at age 54, his life will be effectively over.  Does that sound like 6 months?  So much for the "white privilege" the commenter above alludes to.  Personally *I* think it should have been a longer sentence, but at least it's not only 7 years like murderers sometimes get.

Another Nurse Does It!

Here's a new story, this one out of Oregon.  It features yet another male nurse found sexually assaulting "sedated" patients.  The horrors of Versed/Midazolam just keep going.  No matter how many stories there are about abuse of patients with this drug, physical torture AND sexual assault, the medical community ignores the problems.  So not only do we get our brains absolutely fried with this wonder drug, we also get other types of abuse heaped upon us.  Simply for the need of medical attention.

Click here: E.R. Nurse Guilty of What!? ...with Patients!?

How many more patients are out there, feeling OK after their medical treatment, unaware that they have been brutally violated?  I guess for medical practitioners, as long as the patients don't remember they were violated, then it's just fine.  Is this really what you want from medical care?  A nice "sedative" to give you complete amnesia while leaving you awake and very, very "cooperative"?  

A Conversation About Joan River's Debacle On Studentdoctor.net

This article was just sent to my inbox.  Very interesting conversation.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/joan-rivers-cardiac-arrest-outpatient.endo.1095633/

I had to copy the link, I hope it works.

Another Article On Joan Rivers/Sedation

We are still trying to get to the bottom of the debacle with Joan Rivers.  Here is another article on what may have happened, featuring my favorite drug. Click here: Joan Rivers Crisis Highlights Sedation Risks  Sadly each time somebody is cruelly harmed by medical care vis a vis Versed there is a brief flurry of activity and people other than me writing about the dangers.  Soon enough it is swept under the rug.  The medical field in general doesn't want us to refuse their amnesia and patient control drug.  No matter how dangerous it is for us, the attractions for medical people in general and crna's in particular are such that it's nearly impossible to get any real action on telling the public how bad this drug can be.  Medical people don't care, the law doesn't protect us and any criticism of Versed at all is met with resistance.  Just look in the comments section of the above link to see some of that.

Eventually I am proved right. Sedation...Increases Risks

I got this one from a friend of mine.  I can't believe it!  FINALLY I am vindicated.  If you haven't read any of my other posts, I was a victim of a crna with a syringe of Versed/Midazolam.  He poisoned me with it, against my will, immediately prior to giving me an axillary nerve block.  So here we have a recent article from Johns Hopkins and surprise surprise, they say the same thing I have been saying.  I have found other articles, but this one is the most succinct in regards to sedation and nerve blocks.  The article also addresses the COST of sedation.  Something I recently had a crna try to argue with me over.  She told me how "cheap" Versed/Midazolam is, in the vial.  She didn't want to talk about the excess additional charges associated with Versed use.  This article talks about it.

Click here: Sedation Before Nerve Block Increases Risks, Not Pain Relief - 02/13/2014

Here's the whole article linked above.  I have highlighted and italicized those passages which I particularly like.

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Sedation Before Nerve Block Increases Risks, Not Pain Relief

Release Date: February 13, 2014

New research suggests that sedating patients before a nerve block needed to diagnose or treat chronic pain increases costs, risks and unnecessary surgeries, and sedation does nothing to increase patient satisfaction or long-term pain control.

 

“Sedation doesn’t help, but it does add expense and risk,” says study leader Steven P. Cohen, M.D., a professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “In some places, every patient is being sedated. Our research shows it should be used very sparingly.”

 

Nerve blocks, performed by injecting anesthetics and/or steroids into any number of areas of the body, from the spinal column to the hip joint, are often performed ahead of surgery and in addition to other invasive procedures, such as the ablation of nerves to treat arthritis in the back, to more accurately pin down the source of pain. If the nerve block fails to numb pain, surgery or the nerve ablation may not help. Increasingly, physicians have used light or even deep sedation in a bid to ease anxiety and pain while the injection is given.

 

However, results of the new study, reported online Feb. 13 in the journal Pain Medicine, show that sedation before a nerve block significantly increases false-positive results, which means patients are more likely to be sent in for surgeries and other procedures that won’t cure the underlying pain. Another worry, Cohen says, is the health risk when someone is sedated.

 

Cohen and researchers from several other medical centers in the United States recruited 73 patients with back or limb pain who were scheduled to receive multiple nerve blocks. Roughly half of the group received the first injection with sedation and the second without. The remaining patients received their injections in the opposite order. Patients were given six-hour pain diaries, a routine step that helps patients determine whether the injections bring relief, and were asked to rate their satisfaction with the treatment. They were also seen a month later and asked to rate their pain and function after the treatment.

 

Although the sedated patients reported less pain immediately after the nerve block injection, on every other measure — from 30-day pain assessments to overall patient satisfaction — the results were the same whether or not they were sedated.

 

“A lot of cost for very little benefit,” Cohen says.

 

The increase in false-positive results — the belief that the pain has been relieved when it has not been — can result from many factors, Cohen says. The medication used for the sedation itself can have pain-relieving properties. The sedative can relax muscles. Patients may need to take extra time away from daily activities after being under anesthesia, and that rest alone could make the patient feel better.

 

But if patients believe that the nerve block eased their underlying pain, the physician will often conclude he or she has found the source and will move ahead with the appropriate treatment, which may include spinal fusion or radiofrequency ablation of nerves for arthritis, Cohen says. In the end, he says, many patients end up back at square one — still in pain, but having suffered through a potentially unnecessary operation.

 

Cohen says that while many physicians may use sedation in a sincere effort to make the procedure less traumatic for patients, there is also a perverse financial incentive to use it.

 

“Unfortunately, medicine in many places has become a business. The fact is, you get paid more money to do the procedure with sedation,” he says. “The costs of anesthesia can be more than the fee for the procedure itself. And patients are getting harmed.”

 

The research was funded by the Center for Rehabilitation Sciences Research, part of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

 

Haroon Hameed, M.D., and Michael E. Erdek, M.D., both of Johns Hopkins, contributed to this study, as well as researchers from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda; the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.; the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; and the University of Florida in Gainesville.

 

For more information from Johns Hopkins Medicine about pain management, click here.