Calif. Medical Assn. President Shares Medical Horror Story – by Cheryl Clark, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today – Jan 2019
The new president of the California Medical Association was expecting to spend New Year’s at a wedding in Las Vegas.
Instead, David Aizuss, MD, posted on Facebook about his “eye opening” first-hand view of “American medicine at its worst.”
While I’m sorry for what he endured, I can’t help but be pleased that such a high-ranking doctor suffered exactly the same brutal treatment pain patients struggle with: the routine refusal to relieve pain (if not outright disbelief and accusations of drug-seeking).
In his post, Aizuss said he was rushed by ambulance to a hospital Monday morning.
“I spent hours in the emergency room where I
- received inadequate treatment of mind boggling pain,
- was never touched or examined by a physician,
- was mixed up with another patient and almost inadvertently transferred to another hospital, (and)
- was scheduled for emergency surgery based on a third patient’s lab work that was confused with mine,” he wrote.
He “finally signed out of the hospital against medical advice so I could obtain care from physicians that I know and trust.”
He did not name the hospital.
Why on earth would he not identify his tormentors? Is he afraid of naming names that may include another high-ranking doctor?
Dozens of Facebook friends, several apparently also physicians, expressed their shock that the CMA president could receive such poor emergency room response, and some said they were happy he was speaking out about poor quality of hospital care.
I think it’s a bit hypocritical that physicians are expressing shock over the treatment they themselves dole out daily.
“If you get terrible care like this (at least you know the difference) think about the care that Joe Sixpack gets; he doesn’t have the resources to get better care. This system is broken and we need to fix it,” posted one.
Why is it only when one of their own is subject to this treatment that they “need to fix it”? As long as it’s only pain patients being tortured most of them remain silent.
Wrote another, “As president of the CMA, your voice can be loud! Don’t be timid and do not be afraid of making enemies.
This is great advice they need to give themselves as they are working in a system that needlessly tortures pain patients.
If doctors don’t protest, they are all complicit.
Remember our patients know and respect us when we stand against poor medicine.“
Suddenly the treatment received by almost all pain patients is “poor medicine”? Or is it only “poor medicine” when a high-ranking doctor is subjected to it?
The CMA represents about 43,000 physicians in the state and is the second largest organized medicine group of any state, next to the Texas Medical Association, which represents about 52,000 physicians.
I hope more such events happen. Having a high-ranking or rich person suffer and be unable to “buy their way out” is so unusual in our society that it could finally cause enough outrage from enough of them to change these draconian rules.
Eventually, almost everyone, no matter their rank or prestige or bags of money, will have an accident or surgery that requires opioids. So it’s just a matter of time before the people making these rules end up suffering the results themselves. Let’s hope it happens soon.
EDS and Chronic Pain News & Info 
Well, good! I’m sorry he had to endure that, but at least he now knows what everyone else is dealing with in the Real World. The reason he does not identify the facility is that if he did, he would find himself just like me: unemployed. And blacklisted. For telling the truth.
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Truth-telling can be hazardous to your health – though perpetuating the lie also has its “biopsychosocial” costs, with a corrosion of character and the resulting vehement defensiveness a dead giveaway that values have been compromised.
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Great story: The difference is that ‘High-Ranker” made ONE call to get ANY opiate (in any quantity) he desired.
And this guy was “unaware” of the deadly crisis that’s plagued, punished -and killed- pain patients for nearly a decade !!!!???. Fuck off, shit-balls like that; where the fuck was this asshole prior to ? On a deserted island ?
This is the problem with “big-(corrupt) government and ‘rich-prick’ society that luckily escaped (for now) the ravaging brutality of so many vile soft-tissue/nervous system/injury pain conditions -undetected, not by lack of sophisticated equipment, but by a very unsophisticated system (of physician’s/ “specialists”) that care far more about their golf game, pay-day and next vacation than participating and addressing the desperate needs of the very same patients they took an oath to help, protect -and heal. Too many self-serving, selfish, care-free hypocrites.
This is a (telling) story; the breakdown of human decency, discipline, respect, compassion, empathy -and dutifulness.
Hand-in-hand with the devastation of Mother Earth herself -this is a disease that’s been plaguing society/government for decades; a simple “who gives a shit” attitude has and will continue to have devastating, perilous consequences. A massive breakdown at its apex. Hold on tight, major catastrophic realities have just begun ….
peter jasz
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I agree and am sad to see “the breakdown of human decency, discipline, respect, compassion, empathy -and dutifulness.”
Yet we know there are still many who have not succumbed to cynical profiteering and that gives me some comfort – especially since my doctor is among them.
Our capitalist system is just doing exactly what it was designed to do: maximize profits for the owners (or stockholders) of capital. Without restrictions in areas of social services like medicine, this system is rapacious and utterly amoral.
I think the European countries have a better mix of capitalist businesses and socialist services, though I don’t presume to know what the optimal balance would be.
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Reblogged this on The War on Chronic Pain Patients.
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