Medical Archives

Teacher fired for flunking screwups
Posted by Fired Fred on June 26, 2007 4:52 PM
Doesn't poor work in college deserve a failing grade? Heather Flowers thought some of her microbiology students at the University of Mississippi Medical Center got what they deserved: big, fat F's on their transcripts for flunking her class.

The school thought differently and asked her to change those grades to incompletes. Heather F refused. A firing ensued.

She's not happy...
Flowers said she refused to change the grades to incompletes out of a sense of responsibility. The students who go through the program in which she taught go on to become medical technologists.

With no state governing body for med techs, once they graduate they are free to work in doctors' offices and hospitals.

Med techs work on samples collected by doctors and nurses.

"The only way to regulate this is through their education," Flowers said. "There's nothing (else) stopping them from killing patients."
She and the school are peaceably working out their differences. Yeah, right. She's put the school on notice that she plans to sue them for wrongful termination, defamation and violation of the state's whistleblower law just as soon as she legally can.

Heather F says she knows why the school prodded her to fix those failures...
"They're changing grades to keep students from losing financial aid," Flowers said. "They're all about tuition, tuition, tuition. If you fail a student, what do you lose? Tuition."
Sounds like she just learned a valuable lesson about the real world. People are temporary, but cash flows are forever.
Lab tech bites boy, suffers job overbite
Posted by Fired Fred on September 27, 2007 4:11 PM
Reason for leaving last job: fired for biting autistic 3 year old boy, but the little monster bit me first!

Anyone else perceive a problem for the unnamed lab tech, now perusing the job market after being fired for too much toothiness in the workplace...
A former lab technician admitted to investigators she bit an autistic boy during a blood test, but said the 3-year-old had bitten her first, Indianapolis police said Wednesday.

The boy's mother, Faith Buntin, took him to St. Vincent in Indianapolis for a blood test because of recent recalls of toys involving lead. Buntin said that as the technician restrained the boy so a colleague could draw blood, the worker restraining him put her mouth on the boy's shoulder.

Buntin said the worker told her, "it was just a play bite," and that the boy wasn't hurt.
Everyone's sorry this happened - the nibbly tech, the hospital, the tech's subcontractor, so I'm sure this will quickly blow over and be forgotten.

Ok, I'm kidding. I won't be at all surprised if the family sues damn near everyone involved, including Peyton Manning because his name is on the hospital too. Look for the outraged statement from a lawyer, tearful kiddie pictures, media sniping, and finally a terse statement that a settlement has been reached.
Fired, yeah, but the 8-year health plan was great
Posted by Fired Fred on November 21, 2007 4:56 PM
The usual process after being fired, something which I've learned in my working career, means some HR drone cuts you out of all the extra stuff the company told you were great reasons for working for them.

Health care is really expensive, so the drones want to make sure you're cutoff or shunted onto a COBRA plan immediately. I know I was shocked to hear that some government HR person in Michigan screwed this up for Jackie Youhanian.

She got the county government approved pink slip almost as soon as she was hired. Someone forgot to tell the insurance company about that...
A woman who was fired after less than 10 days as a county worker ran up eight years and $230,000 worth of bills on her government-paid health insurance for cancer and other treatments, a prosecutor says.

The 38-year-old woman used her Macomb County-funded Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance to pay for care for ovarian cancer, multiple sclerosis and spinal problems, authorities say. They say Blue Cross investigators discovered the billings.
The prosecutor called this a criminal scheme. Yeah, it would have been much less expensive for them if she'd conveniently dropped dead, wouldn't it? Thanks heavens Congress and the White House will protect a big insurer like Blue Cross from the terror of anything resembling a single-payer healthcare system.

How long until January 20, 2009, anyway? Not soon enough, right?