Posted on 07/25/2010 6:20:15 PM PDT by Suck My AR-16
Family and pediatrician tangle over gun question
It was a question Amber Ullman least expected Wednesday from her children's pediatrician.
Do you keep a gun in the house?
When the 26-year-old Summerfield woman refused to answer, the Ocala doctor finished her child's examination and told her she had 30 days to find a new pediatrician and that she wasn't welcome at Children's Health of Ocala anymore.
"Whether I have a gun has nothing to do with the health of my child," said the mother of three girls.
more> http://www.ocala.com/article/20100724/ARTICLES/7241001/1402/NEWS?Title=Family-and-pediatrician-tangle-over-gun-question
(Excerpt) Read more at ocala.com ...
The American Association of Pediatrics urges pediatricians to ask questions of parents about gun ownership when they get children's medical histories and to suggest that parents remove guns from the home.
It's the licencing agency that caused the problem in the first place.
Old sayings are that way because they have a large smattering of truth
We grew up country. My sister hated country. We used to be tight. She was my favorite sibling, and thankfully, is now again. I'd visit her, but never liked it when she lived in the city. "Come home" i'd say, but she felt our country home was not to her liking. I had a pickup truck with a well-used shotgun rack (in massachusetts, if you buy that!)
I would visit her in some great spots, P_aris, london, bangkok, myanmar, qatar, bagdad, wherever her leftist news nedia spots sent her. She was never scared, I always got there on press credentials and a Nigerian passport
Nothing scared my commie sister until the home invasion.
It was that day, i'll never forget the call, she stopped being a leftist.
Welcome home, sis!
She should have answered, I am sorry, that question is far too personal. Which could also be answered regarding guns in the house.
Personally, I would say no, however I am fully versed on my second amendment rights should I decide to get one.
She’s lucky to discover the fascist charater of this “doctor” now before she has to deal with a serious health problem and he decides it is best for society (or his pocket book) for him to kill her kid.
Having dealt with doctors for a long time in business, as human beings, some are meglomaniacs and are not worth the dirt on your shoe. When you sniff them out - run in the other direction. Sometimes no health care is better than hate and death care.
Well, I don’t see kids or teens anymore (due to their obnoxious parents, mostly), but I see many adults in my practice (psychiatry) who not only enjoy talking to me about their new-found or life long gun hobbies, but one woman and two men in law enforcement whom I know carry concealed to their appointments. I never bring it up, or register either pleasure or displeasure over the topic, but they just seem to feel comfortable bringing it up on their own. They can probably sense I’m not the sort to react negatively to it.
Having said that, a doctor may terminate with any patient at any time for any reason he or she wants, and is not obliged to tell the patient the reason - and it is usually not wise to do so. There is a standard way to do this to cover emergencies and such until the patient has had a chance to get care elsewhere, and there are also routine procedures to protect oneself legally. Of course, it is everyone’s right to try to make the doctor’s life miserable by filing a complaint with the state medical board, but I’ve never heard of one being successful when the termination was done the usual way.
Most complaints about doctors, as far as I can tell, are so lacking in merit that they never rise to the level where the doctor is even notified by the board that a complaint was filed.
Two have resulted in actual investigations against me and were untimately dismissed. To let you know how frivolous they can be: one involved a Hispanic career felon under my care serving a 25 year sentence on a forensic unit (after he played the system to spend his time there rather than in prison), who coldcocked me - causing substantial facial and eye injuries - as I was coming around the corner to the nurses station while on call one night. He then decided the best legal defense was an offense: he hired the local Hispanic patient advocate to help plead his case that the Anglo doctor had dissed him.
The other was a woman who made her living as a foster parent, who illegally and irresponsibly gave her children away to a friend across state as she was about to kill herself, and who, after being forced into the hospital under my care, tried then to use her connections at the Department of Health and Social Services to vaguely disparage my professional conduct in order to undermine my professional opinion about her mental state, since it would preclude her from ever being a foster mom again.
Of course, I had no recourse but to hire attorneys and rebut the allegations - not hard to do since they had no merit, but at enormous expense and emotional drain to me, and resulting in incidents I must submit proof about to authorities forever after in my practice. Another reason I’m gradually going Galt.
So you all go ahead and file those complaints to the state medical board over mere differences of opinion and a doctor’s right to refuse service to anyone except in an emergency. Heck, we won’t even need ObamaCare to further the ongoing doctor shortage.
I would hate to be in any kind of business these days. Too many sue happy people looking to score the big one or as in your cases looking to justify their own deficiencies/problems/criminality. It's a disaster for our country that so many won't accept responsibility.
Glad your sister made it back!
I assume this doctor is not the only pediatrician who practices at this hospital. I’ll also assume that more than one group of pediatricians works out of this Children’s Hospital. My question is he may have every right to refuse a patient, but by what authority does he ban the child from other doctors or the hospital. It seems to me he overstepped and misrepresented his authority in banning the child from the hospital. His refusal to treat the child may not be actionable, but his speaking for those he does not represent may be an actionable offense.
It probably shouldn't have proceeded far enough for THEM to be the ones to decide she was no longer their patient. Besides, if they're not going to do business with her anymore, whether it takes her 30 minutes or 3 years to find a new health care contractor is none of their affair. Unless they were saying they'd continue to treat her family for 30 days and after that she was on her own.
I’d ask the the doc if he would be willing to post a sign saying “this is a gun-free house” on his front lawn. But then again I bet this quack lives in a gated community, you know how anally-retentive the little Napoleons in those homeowner associations can get.
I’d like to know what the doctor’s credentials and training are that qualify him to give professional advice on home safety.
There is no "kid" old enough to be seen by a doctor without a parent present. If they're that old, you're not their legal guardian anymore. Plus, have you heard all the stories of doctors sexually molesting their patients? That sure won't be going on with a parent in the room.
Why hold out about the F-16 in the driveway?
This question comes up at every visit with my children’s pediatrician. I always say “no” because it is none of their business. The last time the doctor was talking to my youngest about riding his bike. She asked him if he wore a helmet, and he was honest and said “no”. I told her that I gave up trying to get my boys, who are 12 and 13, to wear a helmet. She looked at my son, as if I weren’t sitting there, and said, “Well if I was your mother—if *I* was your mother, I wouldn’t let you ride your bike without a helmet. I would be worried about you getting a head injury.” I couldn’t believe what she was insinuating, and I could feel my cheeks getting red. She had been his pediatrician from birth, but that was the LAST straw for me.
Freaking lib.
Old news...Been a standard question in many states (eg. MD) for a decade...
That would be incorrect. He has the knowledge but I have the power. I go to him as a contractor for specialized knowledge, equipment, and skills I don't possess, just like when I call a plumber. I'm still the boss, and if he doesn't approach our relationship with the same understanding, he can go fsck himself.
That's where the broken glass, mortared to the top of the fence, comes in.
Since you are a Psychiatrist, I would be interested in your advice / opinions of how a patient should respond to such a question by a Doctor: “Do you have guns in your house?”
Where’s the NRA on this? Defending this constitutional right is their freeping job.
The American Association of Pediatrics isn't a licensing agency. It's a professional association, a club you can join if you're a pediatrician. They don't have any authority to tell you whether or not you may practice, nor whether you may call yourself a pediatrician.
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