From: Brian Symonds   <[log in to unmask]>     the devil's adovcate!
 
"The truth is, K. is probably now less of a traffic hazard than before he
contracted PD."
Says who? Other than people with anxiety diseases and dementia, people are on
their best behaviour (especially professionals) when they are in the doctor's
office or are being knowingly observed or are under pressure to perform. We
are usually at our worst when we are acting or reacting automatically, or
when we are tired. K may have been observed turning a corner too widely in
public, but perform perfectly on a driver's exam. However, I understood that
the people who reported K reported that they were worried about what "might"
happen, rather than what had happened.
 
"He is a person, can be talked to, and if he proves to be obstinate he can
still be "reported".  Do we really want to "create an atmosphere" where
"people [...] report things" without concern for their neighbour?"
I agree with the first part wholeheartedly. Why didn't these people talk to
K? Why didn't K's doctor talk to K? However, don't we already have an
atmosphere wherein people are afraid to talk to their neighbours, and are
even more afraid to get involved with people they don't know or social
agencies. How can a child die of starvation or people be hurt in this country
without someone saying something? I have the impression from the media that
people who feel they have been wronged either head to their lawyer or resort
to terrorism first before talking reasonably to their accusers. And if K was
known to be a professional person (even if retired), the people may have felt
intimidated because of that, and not able to approach him.
I like to think that the atmosphere is better in small and rural communities
than it is in the city which is why we live in a small community. If K
creates a big ruckus for the people involved, how will they react (and
whenever I see the word lawyer or words barrister and soliciter, I know there
are likely to be disquieting times ahead). WIll they be more likely to get
involved, or less likely? The trick for K I think and hope is to find a
nonthreatening rewarding way to communicate with these people (the tattle
tales, the doctor, the government agencies), and brandish the legal stick
only when other possibilities have been exhausted.
Is it better to have a society wherein no one reports anything, or wherein
people can report anonomously, with somtimes it being done inappropriately or
maliciously? I agree that it would be really great if we lived in times
wherein a person would talk first and report only if that was unsatisfactory,
and it would be good to foster that atmosphere. But how? My idea was for the
tattle tales to learn what happened to K on the basis of their report, and to
get some education about PD. Can K do that without malice, or is it better to
come from the licencing agency? I guessed the agency.
 
"Some comments on "K's family doctor's role in this".  The doctor
last saw K. in January 1995. The first and only report was written in
July 1995.  K. had not thought initially that, having been in the
care of and having trusted that physician for over ten years, a
report could have been written without K. being advised of it."
I do not know why a doctor would not advise his patient that a report had
been requested about the patient, unles the doctor was directed to keep the
report confidential. The fact that K knew and trusted this doctor for 10
years suggests that the doctor was probably reasonable and competent. Doctors
are not lawyers, and are human. If they get a letter from a government agency
that is known to wield a lot of power, and if they feel (however vaguely)
that they have some legal obligation to reply, they may comply without taking
the time to really think about what they are doing, and what their legal
responsibility is to their patient and to the legal request. Being human, and
not thinking things through properly are at best poor excuses for a
professional person to make an error that adversely affects someone's life,
but we all learn from our own and the mistakes of others. I would hope that
the doctor would have put in the reply the date he last examined K, but if
the agency did not specifically request that information, he may not have.
Doctors often joke that it is lawyers who run the health care system
(although the economists are making a run for this position now), as they get
lots of legal directives about what they can and cannot do in given
situations. It helps everyone if an error can be acknowledged, but for legal
reasons, this often doesn't happen.
 
"The report indeed contained the wrong dosage for Parlodel."
This error then was the doctor's for even if it was a transcription error in
the doctor's office that was not picked up, it is still the doctor's
responsibility. I would like to think that we all (and not just doctors) can
acknowledge our mistakes, and wonder if this doctor will get the chance, as
that will do him and K some good. The doctor did his legal responsibility
(finally) by giving K a copy of the reports. Based on K's experience, we all
know now how to extricate reports from a doctor's office (I wouldn't have
thought that third party reports would have been excluded in the response to
K's first request and again wonder about the doctor having legal advice to do
this and I wouldn'nt have been knowledgeable enough to ask specificially for
these as K did. I wonder if K had been able to get the report after having
his licience suspended if it would have made any difference in the course of
events since.
 
"The letter talks about the physician having been unable to communicate with
K."
I guess we can only speculate at what it means.
 
"a "group of concerned citizens" shared the physician's views and had
communicated them to SAAQ.  This leaves only two possibilities: the physician
is cahoots with the group of "concerned citizens" or the physician has
learned this from SAAQ.
Cahoots means to be in partnership with or in a conspiracy with. Without some
facts to support this contention, it seems unlikely that the doctor joined
legally, or in spirit with a group, or in a conspiracy to "get" K. I notice
that you didn't put the word shared in quotes. I would presume that if a
group of concerned citiizens had approached K about K's driving that the
doctor would have spoken to K about this before issuing a report, and since
he didn't (unless this is what was meant by being unable to communicate with
K), it is likely that the doctor was told this by the agency requesting the
report. In the copy of the stuff on his chart, did K get a copy of a letter
from the government agency to the doctor requesting a report? It is not clear
to me legally whether or not the doctor has to provide such letters to
people, although if it is on the person's chart, my understanding is that he
does. In the United States, to the shame of the doctors involved, there have
been doctors found guilty in fraudlent schemes to get money illegally from
insurance companies. However, it is hard to imagine what gain there might be
for the doctor in this type of situation, and it still seems to me most
likely that the doctor was acting under the impression of having some
obligation to the motor vehicle licencing agency and was not "in cahoots"
with anyone.
 
It will be interesting to see what further information comes out, and what
the eventual outcome will be. With Parkinson's, it may be hard to "roll with
the punches" but it is till worth trying.