Disciplining of Osler doctor an abuse of power
Mandatory tracking, optional vaccination, video access in play with camps just a week away
The decision by the William Osler Health System to strip a physician of a medical director role after he criticized the province’s handling of COVID-19 is an egregious abuse of power by hospital leadership.
Public hospitals are governed by provincial legislation, allowing them to make operational decisions. But Osler managers overstepped their bounds by assuming they have the power to infringe on a physician’s constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression.
Dr. Brooks Fallis was removed as interim medical director of critical care at William Osler Health System, despite his efforts to lead it through the pandemic. The reason? He says it was because hospital management disliked his public remarks on Twitter about how the province was dealing with COVID-19 and felt threatened that his comments could endanger the funding relied on by the hospital.
Physicians are not the hospital’s pawns in whatever funding game may or may not be going on. As reported in the Star, the premier’s office has categorically denied that it threatened to withhold hospital funding in this circumstance (it would otherwise be an abuse of power in public office). To be clear, Fallis’s allegation is that the hospital told him that the government would withhold funding.
According to the Star, Fallis was let go from his position as interim medical director because of his “outspoken, public statements regarding Ontario’s pandemic response.” For a hospital to punish a physician for exercising his freedom of expression in this context is outrageous and nothing short of misconduct on the part of hospital leadership.
Physicians are not hospital employees. They are independent, self-regulated health professionals appointed to a hospital, for a specified term, under the Public Hospitals Act. The structure that governs a physician’s hospital privileges means that a hospital cannot simply “fire” a physician; revocation of hospital privileges must follow certain procedures and be based on specific grounds. But their independence also means that physicians lack certain protections within a hospital structure, unlike nurses who are unionized.
Stripping a physician of his position based on his exercise of his freedom of expression is appalling, and suggests that hospital leadership thinks it owns and can control physicians.
Intimidating physicians against publicly voicing their concerns about a pandemic, is not how our publicly funded hospitals ought to run.
Simply because the hospital does not like his comments about the government’s handling of the pandemic, does not mean it is within the hospital’s jurisdiction to control. This physician has every right to air his viewpoints on his personal social media, or other public platforms, and for the very basic reason that he is in a free and democratic society. Moreover, he is on the front lines of the pandemic, in one of the hardest-hit regions of the province.
Any physician has the constitutionally protected freedom to express their views on social media or in other news channels, as long as the person does not represent themselves as a spokesperson for the hospital, does not say anything specifically about the hospital, remains professional, and the comments or viewpoints do not interfere with delivery of patient care.
Physicians also have every right to build their public profile and they do not need hospital approval to do so, and they certainly do not need approval from HR. HR has no jurisdiction over physicians and certainly no legal basis for interfering with a physician’s public profile.
The fact that the hospital has attempted to intimidate physicians against doing media without hospital approval raises the question of whether it is trying to prevent physicians from establishing an independent public profile, so that physicians feel beholden to the hospital and fear their job security. For if physicians have an independent, professional profile, they may be less afraid to stand up to hospital leadership.
This kind of attempt by a hospital to silence a physician speaking publicly about our public health resources is illegal. And a physician’s refusal to submit to this disgraceful abuse of power is also not grounds to refuse to renew their privileges when the time comes.
Rulebook: The three-batter minimum for pitchers will be enforced again, starting March 14 … Seven-inning games in doubleheaders and runners on second base to start extra innings will continue.
The pilot who crashed the helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant, killing all nine aboard, made a series of poor decisions that led him to fly blindly into a wall of clouds where he became so disoriented he thought he was climbing when the craft was plunging toward a Southern California hillside, federal safety officials said Tuesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board primarily blamed pilot Ara Zobayan in the Jan. 26, 2020, crash that killed him along with Bryant, the basketball star’s daughter and six other passengers heading to a girls basketball tournament.
Zobayan, an experienced pilot, ignored his training, violated flight rules by flying into conditions where he couldn’t see and failed to take alternate measures, such as slowing down and landing or switching to autopilot, that would have averted the tragedy. The safety board said it was likely he felt pressure to deliver his star client to his daughter’s game.
The agency announced the long-awaited findings during a four-hour hearing pinpointing
probable causes of what went awry in the 40-minute flight. The crash led to widespread public mourning for the retired basketball star, several lawsuits and prompted state and federal legislation.
The agency also faulted Island Express Helicopters Inc., which operated the aircraft, for inadequate review and oversight of safety matters.
When Zobayan decided to climb above the clouds, he entered a trap. Once a pilot
loses visual cues by flying into fog or darkness, the inner ear can send erroneous signals to the brain that causes spatial disorientation. It’s sometimes known as “the leans,” causing pilots to believe they are flying aircraft straight and level when they are banking.
Zobayan radioed air traffic controllers that he was climbing when, in fact, he was banking and descending rapidly toward the steep hills near Calabasas, investigators concluded.
Flying under visual flight rules, Zobayan was required to be able to see where he was going. Flying into the cloud was a violation of that standard and probably led to his disorientation, the safety board said.
“What part of cloud, when you’re on a visual flight rules program, do pilots not understand?” safety board vice-chair Bruce Landsberg said.
Board member Michael Graham said Zobayan ignored his training and added that as long as helicopter pilots continue flying into clouds without relying on instruments, which requires a high level of training, “a certain percentage aren’t going to come out alive.”
There were 184 aircraft crashes between 2010-2019 involving spatial disorientation, including 20 fatal helicopter crashes, the safety board said.
The Sikorsky S-76B helicopter was flying at about 296 km/h and descending at a rate of more than 1,200 metres per minute when it slammed into the hillside and ignited, scattering debris over an area the size of a football field. The victims died immediately.