DARWIN DOCTOR AWARDS - EXAMPLE #1 (We'll add more)
It is entirely appropriate to report that anesthesiologist Mark Campano had always been a ticking time bomb. Other physicians were well aware of his tendency to work while sleep-deprived and irritable, due largely to his super-caffeinated days and alcohol-addled nights.
They tried to counsel him about his drug abuse and begged him to seek help. But was the public ever warned? Not even close. That's not the way American health care works.
The mind-boggling fact is that he was allowed to continue to hold a thousand lives in his hands during surgeries for years, before he was finally ejected permanently from the O.R.
But cosmic good fortune smiled on countless future patients, the fateful day when college-educated Campano literally blew himself up, in his Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio apartment. While loading a shotgun shell, he triggered an explosion that shook his apartment complex and left Campano bleeding. When law enforcement and the fire crew arrived, Campano’s neighbors were evacuated, and Campano himself was arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a bomb.
Why?
The FBI found 35 bombs made out of copper pipe, plastic pipe, explosive powder,
end caps and fuses. Investigators also discovered various firearms and enough
ammunition to arm a small nation.Other apartments were evacuated, but no one else
was injured.
Campano, age 56, graduated from Wright State University medical school in
Ohio, and he did his residency at hospitals in Akron and Miami. Within a few short years out of school he was diagnosed with alcohol dependence and drug abuse. He was placed on
10 years probation and ordered to abstain from drugs and alcohol, but even though he found it impossible to hold a job at a series of Cleveland hospitals due to his drug use, his license was not revoked permanently until 2005. As is so often the case, physician misbehavior is tacitly ignored by authorities until it rises well beyond the level if insanity.
The Moral of the story?
Learn all you can about your doctor: Before agreeing to any surgery, keep in mind it isn't enough to simply know the background of your surgeon. Find out who else is going to be in the operating room - especially the anesthesiologist. One good first stop in researching doctor misbehavior in any state is this website.
