Whistle-Blower Nurse Acquitted

A nurse in Andrews, Texas, Anne Mitchell, was acquitted last Thursday by a state court jury on felony charges. In the indictment, the State alleged that she had committed the felony of “misuse of official information” by submitting private patient file numbers to the State Medical Board. She claimed that she was trying to let the Board know that a doctor at her hospital was practicing unsafe medicine.

The jury took less than an hour to reach its verdict.

As with many disputes like this that end up in a trial, there was a back story. As the New York Times reporter, Kevin Sack, pointed out:

The prosecution has so polarized the small town of Kermit, where the hospital is located, that the judge moved the trial to a neighboring county. The case was investigated by Sheriff Robert L. Roberts Jr., a friend and admiring patient of Dr. Arafiles, and tried by the county attorney, Scott M. Tidwell, a political ally of the sheriff and, according to testimony, Dr. Arafiles’s personal lawyer.

Though the prosecution insisted it was all about patients’ rights to privacy, It looks like twelve good citizens in Andrews thought otherwise. They certainly bought into the defense’s version of the facts:

Mr. Cook presented broad evidence that the nurses’ concerns about Dr. Arafiles, 47, were well founded, and that Mrs. Mitchell had violated no laws or regulations in alerting the governmental body that licenses and regulates physicians. He walked the jury through a series of questionable cases involving Dr. Arafiles, including one in which the doctor performed a skin graft in the hospital’s emergency room, despite not having surgical privileges, and another where he sutured a rubber tip to a patient’s crushed finger for protection.

These types of cases are difficult because the Free Speech card is played often, and loudly when played. Nurses, not doctors, are the backbone of our medical system. That is not a slight to doctors at all. It is merely the recognition that nurses get none of the glory, very little of the money and most of the headaches. They know which providers to count on and which to avoid.

Importantly, nurses know that accusing a doctor of being a hack has deep ramifications. Anne Mitchell surely knew nothing good for her was going to come from what she did – except knowing that she did the right thing. If I owned a hospital, I would certainly have a spot for her.