I have to thank the president of our university, Eli Capilouto, for the inspiration of this latest post. To explain, in the comments section of the previous post the conversations migrated to the deteriorating atmosphere in the College of Medicine and the hospital that has precipitated the exodus or soon to be exodus of a number of talented physicians, especially in the trauma division of the Surgery Department. Recent emails and blog conversations suggest this desire to leave has extended to a variety of other departments and divisions in the hospital and even to academic departments. This bothered me enough that I sent an email last week to President Capilouto expressing my concerns, and yesterday I received his response, which I have copied in below:
Dear Mr. Noonan,
Thank you for your communication. Your allegations and speculations are unclear. Please provide details of these to William Thro, the University’s General Counsel who I have copied, by noon on Friday, February 25.
Sincerely,
eli
You see, I opened up this opportunity by mentioning in my email following my discussion of this exodus of talented trauma surgeons, “The bottom line is, it is going to begin costing lives, if it hasn't already”. Therefore, although I have already sent my clarifications to President Capilouto, I thought I would use a blog post to clarify it to the readers of the blog. To do that I have simply pasted in below the “clarifications” I emailed President Capilouto and Mr. Thro.
Dear President Capilouto and Mr. Thro:
Thank you for your reply to my email. As much as you may wish to construe my email as some form of threatening email, it is anything but that. I am sure you fully understand what I am talking about in the email, but to clarify, it is simply an effort to make you aware of the observation (by many throughout the medical center) that the morale of the hospital faculty, physicians and staff is so low that it is impacting both the recruitment and retention of highly talented physicians, faculty and staff. When a hospital loses the services of multiple talented level 1-trauma surgeons in a very short period of time, I cannot see any way this would not impact the quality of services of this unit. If this were podiatry I would say “no sweat”, but when you reduce the quality of care in the treatment of life and death scenarios you shift the balance to the death side of the equation. Thus the very straightforward conclusion that this could be impacting lives. Furthermore, unfortunately this exodus of physicians is not relegated to trauma surgeons, and from the news that I am receiving there are many other quality physicians and even academic scientists looking elsewhere for employment.
It is clear that much of this morale problem in the hospital and College of Medicine emanates from the threatening approach used by the administration and the university lawyers in handling the Dr. Paul Kearney situation. I am not condoning Dr. Kearney’s activities in the treatment of this patient, but it is clear that the disciplinary approach to handling it and the punishment imposed far outweighed the crime. This is strongly suggested by the response to it by the majority of university faculty (who following the indictment elected Dr. Kearney to represent them in the University Senate), the majority of Dr. Kearney’s physician colleagues (who following the indictment elected Dr. Kearney to represent them on the University HeathCare Colleges Council), the majority of medical students (who following the indictment awarded Dr. Kearney a lifetime achievement award), and even the Board of Licensure (who found the cumulative data presented by the university lawyers was insufficient evidence of a violation).
I write you not to cause trouble but to express my concerns and those of many others who have written me or posted anonymously to the blog because they fear retaliation. This Dr. Kearney situation is a festering wound to a College and former faculty colleagues I truly respect and admire. What is developing in the College and hospital is a situation where the people that can leave will and the people that can’t won’t. I really am saddened by that and have to ask, is there really nothing else that “you” could/should be doing to help resolve this.
I hope this clarifies my previous email and thanks again for reading my email. If I can be of any assistance in the matter feel free to contact me.
Respectfully,
Daniel J. Noonan, PhD