This weekly roundup features arrests, criminal proceedings, and other reports alleging improper or questionable conduct by healthcare professionals.
A former government pediatrician and “serial predator” was sentenced to 18 years in prison for molesting Native American boys on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1990s. He still faces additional charges involving alleged sexual abuse. (Great Falls Tribune)
In Canada, three women filed a $135-million class action suit against the national government, claiming they were sexually assaulted by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police physician they nicknamed “Dr. Tweaker,” for what they said was excessive time he spent probing their breasts, CBC reports.
An unnamed Canadian nurse whose license had been suspended after stealing opioids for her own use is now rehired and financially compensated, on the basis that her addiction is a medical disease, the Standard Freeholder reports.
A widow is suing a New York doctor for deliberating violating her husband’s dying wish to be given “comfort measures only,” and providing him with medication that kept him alive for a painful month. (New York Post)
A California doctor pleaded innocent to charges that he illegally provided opioids to three patients. One of them is now facing murder charges after allegedly killing a bicyclist with his car while under the influence, Patch reports.
Also in California, a family practice physician was charged with aiding and abetting a woman who administered Botox and other cosmetic injections without a medical license, some of which resulted in “severe injury and significant facial deformities,” Redding Record Searchlight reports.
Investigators charged a nurse at the Hacienda Healthcare facility in Phoenix with sexually assaulting the woman who gave birth in a vegetative state after his DNA test matched that of the child. (The New York Times)
In Boston, a home care specialist accused of stealing thousands of dollars from blind, elderly, or impaired patients has avoided conviction by changing names and employers and skipping court hearings, the Boston Globe reports.
More lawsuits were filed in the case of Mount Carmel West hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where William Husel, MD, six pharmacists, and 14 nurses were put on leave after investigators found at least 27 patients received potentially lethal doses of pain medication. All the patients died. (The Columbus Dispatch)
After a fertility specialist pleaded guilty to impregnating 35 women with his own semen, lawmakers proposed a new criminal charge: “fertility fraud.” (WIBC)
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
