America's Dumbest Doctors: Ever Wonder About Yours?

ABOUT Patric McDonald

Patric McDonald
30 years in the trenches of emergency medicine has afforded me a front-row seat at the great Medical Miscreant road show. From my early years in medical school at UCSD La Jolla, where one of our respected guest lecturers was found guilty of murdering his wife and 2 daughters - until the M More...

Description

National Healthcare Reform? Now there's a complex subject.  But here's an idea: Why don't we just start by tossing out the lunatics in medicine?

In the late 1970's my classmates & I showed up for an early morning neurotrauma lecture at UCSD La Jolla school of medicine. Our head injury guest speaker was to be Jeffrey MacDonald, MD, from Long Beach A note on the classroom door advised us that we could take the next hour off, because, "Dr. MacDonald unfortunately cannot join us this morning. He had a pressing legal matter to tend to." The legal matter? Well, Doctor Jeffrey MacDonald had in fact murdered his wife and two young daughters, and was on trial. You may have heard the story. That incident profoundly influenced me, and from that day forward I took notes whenever I happened to witness strange doctor behavior. As an advanced emergency care provider in the state of California, I found myself taking an awful lot of notes. Not all the goofiness was murderous, or even criminal. Some of it was downright hysterical. A few years ago, I pulled a dusty briefcase out of the garage, and discovered it was literally bulging with thousands of pages of my scribblings. Thousands. And it occurred to me that maybe other people might find wacky doctor foul-ups, bloops & boo-boos, as odd as I did. "America's Dumbest Doctors": Ever wonder about yours? - is an edgy-humor compilation of stories, anecdotes, headlines, jokes, observations & poetry. I asked nurses & doctors nationwide to weigh in, and 300 of them did. My theory? Observing nutcase behavior in society is good clean fun. But when the wacko wears a lab coat, it might be wise to pay attention. I hope you find the subject matter as entertaining and enlightening as I do. Thanks.

“From ego-errors and tomfoolery, to greed, stupidity and murder – I’ve laughed and cried at McDonald’s astutely biting, at times hysterical view of my peer group. Disturbing, provocative and uncomfortably funny.”
Lesley Miller, MD retired (former “surgeon to the stars”) USC School of Medicine, Los Angeles

“Author McDonald breaks ranks and names names. I sincerely wish I could report that these are merely a few far-out nutcases. I honestly cannot say that. And this fact alone makes his work, regrettably, important.”

J. William Hollingsworth, MD (Retired)

Former Chief of Medicine,  San DiegoVAMedicalCenter