56 - Florida Doctor: Wrongful Death Lawsuit

A routine surgery turned fatal when Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky allegedly removed a man's liver instead of his spleen—but was this a tragic accident or part of a disturbing pattern of negligence? Legal Nurse Consultant Shannon Boyett joins the show to dissect the 500-page civil complaint, uncovering the deeper story of a Florida surgeon with a history of malpractice, lawsuits, and an alleged cover-up. How did he keep operating for so long? Who looked the other way? And who else is named in the lawsuit? 
Boyett reveals how forensic nurses expose medical negligence, while forensic psychologists analyze the warning signs of high-risk professionals, including narcissism, lack of accountability, and an absence of remorse—traits that allow dangerous doctors to continue practicing unchecked. Discover how these forensic experts assist attorneys in high-profile civil lawsuits, exposing the truth and holding negligent professionals accountable.



Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Case of Dr. Shaknovsky
02:55 The Fatal Surgical Error and Its Consequences
06:08 Investigating Dr. Shaknovsky’s Surgical History
09:02 Hospital Accountability and Legal Implications
12:04 The Role of Accreditation and Oversight
15:08 Criminal vs. Civil Liability in Medical Malpractice
17:59 Understanding Tort Reform and Its Impact
20:56 The Psychological Profile of Medical Professionals
24:10 The Financial Implications for Hospitals
26:49 Conclusion and Future Implications for Medical Practice
40:42 Legal Accountability in Medical Malpractice
43:32 Training and Competence in Surgery
46:04 Psychopathy and Medical Professionals
49:10 The Role of Empathy in Healthcare
50:49 Psychological Screening for Medical Professionals
53:09 Narcissism and Professional Competence
56:29 Investigating Medical Cases
01:01:31 Nurse Accountability and Documentation
01:04:10 The Importance of Accurate Medical Records
01:08:01 The Value of Compassionate Care


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Killer Psychologist. I'm Dana Anderson, a forensic psychologist
and your host of the show. Killer Psychologist is for
true crime fanatics and anyone intrigued with the dark side
of psychology.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Killer Psychologist. Today, we're going to talk
about a Florida doctor, a Florida surgeon, doctor Thomas Shaknavowski,
a surgeon who gained notoriety for a fatal surgical error.
In August twenty twenty four. During a procedure intended to

(00:40):
remove seventy year old William Bryan's spleen at a Sacred
Heart Emerald Coast in nermar Beach, Florida, doctor Shaknovowski mistakenly
removed Brian's liver, leading to Brian's death. Following this incident,

(01:02):
doctor Sheknovowski's medical license was suspended by the Florida Department
of Health. He also voluntarily surrendered his Alabama medical license
in November twenty twenty four. In January twenty twenty five,
Brian's widow, Beverly Bryan, filed a civil lawsuit against doctor Sheknavawski,

(01:27):
the hospital, and several staff members, alleging medical malpractice and
a subsequent cover up of the surgical error. The lawsuit
claims that hospital administrators and staff attempted to conceal the
mistake by falsifying records and discouraging an autopsy. As of now,

(01:53):
it remains unclear whether he will face criminal charges. I
have with US today, doctor Wetter. He's a license attorney
and a forensic psychologist. I also have a special guest
with US today, Shannon Boyett. She's a registered nurse, she's
a veteran, and she's a forensic medical records review expert

(02:16):
for medical malpractice and wrongful death cases. And I'm excited
to have you here today. Shannon, tell us a little
bit how you get involved in cases like this. So
I have attorneys who reach out to me on LinkedIn.
I have a LinkedIn profile and they see what I
do and they say, hey, can you help. There's plaintiff

(02:37):
walks into an office and says, I have surgery. I
don't know what's wrong with my arm because it doesn't
work anymore. And I'm handed the medical records and I
developed the story from there using medical records. I've been
doing it for about three years now and I absolutely
love it and I love serving people. So tell me
a little bit bit about doctor shk Nabowski. I know

(03:01):
you just got the civil suit complaint and you were
just reviewing that. What did you find? I found that
this man has been grossly unmanaged and supervised since he
started working at Ascension Sacred Heart in May of twenty twenty.

(03:21):
From about five months of him starting to work at
that hospital, the State of Florida Licensing Board was receiving
complaints about his surgical procedures not going well. Patients were
calling them and letting them know something's wrong. He didn't
do this right. What I do know from just reading
the report put out by the attorney mister Joseph's Azar.

(03:44):
He had one other wrong organ surgery last year where
he removed a part of the pancreas instead of an
adrenal gland. Before that, he caused subsist in a patient
when he did not correctly reattack the ends of a
colon together what we call rha anastomosa. The sutures leaked

(04:06):
and the patient wound up passing away from sepsis. In
two other cases, he severed vessels. He severed a common
bile duct during a gallbladder surgery, and then he also
severed a urator. I think what's most shocking about all
of this is that the follow up by the hospital
to make sure he was safe to practice, they didn't

(04:28):
follow up. Nobody notified the state of which is a
requirement when things like this happen during surgical cases. It
is a requirement by the hospital to let the state know.
And they did not, And so now the hospital is
being named in the suit as well, not just a hospital,
but Ascension Sacred Heart, the corporation. It's a devastating case.

(04:52):
I read through the surgical notes, the report by AKKA,
which is an investigative body for the state of flor
and it is quite evident that even after removing the liver,
he refused to acknowledge that it was the liver until
he was contacted by investigators by AKA, and even during

(05:16):
that period of time, he maintained that it was the
spleen that he removed and not the liver. Wow, even
as operative report states he took out a spleen. And
let me just point out that there is a very
big difference in a liver and a spleen by about
sixteen hundred grams.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Not to mention the anatomical location of the two.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Organs completely different sides of the body.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, there are different sides of the body as well,
So I don't know that's and this will be interesting
to explore. In terms of his training, I know he's
a doctor of Osteopathy, which is a he has a
d degree and he went to the Chicago School of
Osteopathic Medicine. So I'm wondering if you and I'm sure
this is going to be done obviously through discovery, but

(05:57):
what did his training look like? I mean when he
was in undergoing residency and surgery because he's a general surgeon,
so he had to undergo a surgical residency, and I'm
just wondering about how did you get through that?

Speaker 2 (06:09):
That's my question too. Are we looking at another doctor
death where he did not complete all the requirements of
his training. Unfortunately I'm not privy to that information, but
that's a really good question because one of the nurses
who was interviewed by AKA stated that while she was
working at another hospital in Colorado, she heard about him

(06:31):
there before she came to sac Her Heart Hospital and
on the Amal Coast to work. So if you're being
heard of that far away, there's definitely some things that
were not followed up on by hospital administrators, by managers,
by directors, especially surgical directors. The mistakes that I mentioned before,

(06:56):
if I am reading the paperwork correctly, the documentation in
both the suit that was filed and the OKER report,
none of it was ever mentioned in the event reporting
system that we are required to use when there is
a mistake or even a near mistake. If you walk
into a patient's room with the wrong medication and you

(07:17):
scan it and you have, oh, this is an error,
that's a near miss, You're still supposed to document that.
So the system had not been used as it was
designed to be used, and so the following of his
mistakes was very, very bad. That's the only word I

(07:37):
could come up with.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, this is where again the hospital can also have
legal liability as well. And of course I always have
to qualify this when we talk about legal issues, because
this is the state of Florida, and I just want
to put it on the record. I'm not a licensed
attorney in Florida, so I can't give any kind of
specific legal opinion regarding Florida law, but I can certainly

(07:59):
give information about my understanding of the statutory schemes in Florida.
I've reviewed those.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Like I mentioned earlier, they're going after the hospital. They're
going after as sension of Sacred Heart Corporation, and I
think they should. We were talking earlier before the podcast started,
and one of the reasons why I got into legal
nurse consulting and doing what I do is because I
worked with physicians who made mistakes and I did not
hear or see of any repercussions. I have work six

(08:29):
years with physicians who I saw make some pretty significant mistakes,
and you don't ever hear of them getting in trouble.
And to watch your patients suffer and not be treated
as well as they should be treated, it was very frustrating.
So I asked myself, how could I help this issue?

(08:54):
Because being a nurse at bedside, they do not listen
to you. You can make event reporting system and I
want to back up and say the event reporting system
was not used as it should have been. But I
will tell you when you put in an ers as
it is known, nothing ever happens, not that I had seen.
Of course, they probably keep physician business to themselves, but

(09:17):
you see a physician make a grievous error and you
still see am shift after shift after shift. You don't
see the remedial training that's recommended, you don't see any
supervision of the physician. And so I think that is
my goal working in the legal community, is to point
these issues out. And of the cases I have taken,
I have seen some very significant issues of not doing

(09:38):
the right thing, even when you're doing something wrong. And
I think part of the reason this suit is so
big is because the hospital failed to report it. This
was a sentinel event.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, absolutly. I was going to say, these are sentinel
events that have to be reported. And I'm assuming this
is a JACO accredited hospital, so that's the joint commission
that comes out and regularly like they audit essentially the hospital,
all the policies, protocols, everything is audited. I'm wondering about
if you know this, you know, what has Jacob said

(10:16):
about this particular hospital or have they had issues with
accreditation in the past.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Of the six years I worked there, I did not
hear of any issues. There were deficiencies that he allowed
the hospital to correct before they went off site and
put their report in, but it was only associated with paperwork. Well,
you didn't have this in this medical chart, or this
particular thing wasn't followed up on after serge you with
the patient. So just going ahead and pencil whip those

(10:44):
and fix it and we'll call it good and that. Honestly,
that's just from me as a bedside nurse. I was
never privy to all the conversations, of course, and honestly
I never liked being there when Jacob was there, so
I told him because they knew I would be a
little vocal, so they never scheduled me on those days.
We knew Jacob was walking into the door. So Shanna
wasn't never being well behaved.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
I was assigned to a major hospital campus when I
was a back when I was a police officer. I
was their their hospital officer. Essentially, it was a Kaiser
Permanente Healthcare system. It was a very large level It
was a Level one trauma center at the time, but
large hospital. I and I do remember when when Jacob
was coming in. You know, they were always making sure
that they had the right people in place when those

(11:27):
auditors were on site. So yes, accrediting and auditing and
all that stuff is important, but I think we also
recognize that you know administrators, hospital ministers, unless it's an
unscheduled visit, which I understand they do that as well.
Sometimes they'll they'll come and it'll be a surprise visit,
which you know, might catch them off guard. That's just
something that I think would be important to, you know,

(11:48):
look at with this hospital see if you know, some
of that stuff may or may not be public record either,
right like right, it may not be publicly available of information,
but that would be interesting to know. I'm sure the
attorneys are going to be looking into this during discovery
and when they started opposing administrators, right right.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
I have tried to look for Jacob reports. I've never
seen them. The AKA reports are what's public, and those
are the ones who investigate the central events. From my understanding,
they also investigate nursing homes as well. I want to
talk about a little bit too. Is something that the surgeon,
doctor Chevnosky did not mention in his report was that

(12:27):
the patient had a mega colon and so it reduced
visibility into the abdomen and the nurses who were in
the room. They were all help holding that colon in
the proper position and did not see what doctor Schevnosky
was doing when he severed the Vina Keeva. Is when
all hell broke loose in the process of trying to

(12:50):
save the patient's life. Is when doctor Sevnosky removed that liver,
and it was when he had no visibility into the
abdomen he kept working. Instead of stopping the blea or
trying to find a source of bleeding, he proceeded to
take out the liver. And the autopsy report made by
the medical examiner stated exactly the liver was autopsied out

(13:14):
of that man. In other words, there was no clamps,
there was no futures, there was no ligation, there was
no carterie, nothing to take the liver out of him.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
So, yeah, so he just essentially did he bleed out
that I'm making an assumption, but yeah, with no colterization
or anything. I mean, I'm not a medical doctor, but correct,
I'm a little bit of understanding of that. But yeah,
obviously that's a very vascular organ, right, like there's we've
got portal rains and yeah, things that are We're going
to be a lot of bleeding, right if you.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Don't Apparently, at one point in time he actually picked
up one of the vessels in his finger was pulsing
a little bit, and he's like, Oh, that's troubling. Didn't
know what vessel he was touching.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Oh my god, whoa. This goes back to the issue
of like training, I'm just here about you know again,
what is interesting here too, is that when you mentioned
this is a negligent, so they file the civil suit. Right,
the legal theory here is going to be for you know,
medical malpractice negligence. It's going to be a negligence analysis.

(14:13):
But where it can become criminal at least my understanding
in Florida law is when there's reckless disregard for patient
safety or for the life of a patient, then that
could potentially cross over into criminal liability. And again I
don't know whether that's being investigated, and you might have
insights on that, but that's something definitely that I think

(14:36):
is worthy of discussing.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
So I do know there is a criminal case open
the last time I checked the public record, and according
to local news sources, I do know that he acted
recklessly when he fired a stapler into the patient's abdomen blindly,
and that is what started the heavy bleeding. I'm assuming

(15:00):
he severed the vena cava when He did that, and
the patient proceeded to bleed out in code, which, as
you know, heart stops that's death, right and so.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Right, well, but yeah, he had blood pressure is gonna
drop and he's gonna yeah, probably there's.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
No perfusion anywhere. Brain's starting to not you know, right.
So that's your recklessness, that's your reckless behavior that I
immediately honed in on was it wasn't until he severed
that Vina Keva, the patient super really declined and then
he acted horribly afterwards by proceeding to take out the

(15:35):
liver and then lying to the that's the biggest he
lied to the family, lied to them, and then yelled
at the nurses and told them you better label that
as a spleen because he took the liver out. They
went to put it in a specimen container and they're like,
are you sure you want me to label this a
spleen and he said, yes, it's a spleen. It made
it all the way to pathology until it was positively

(15:57):
identified as a liver again anatomy.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
It's like a liver and a spleen. I mean, this
is something that medical students learn, you know, in the
first year of medical school. It's not like, you know,
like basic anatomy.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Right, my fifth grader can open up a book and say, Mom,
that's a liver.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yeah, exactly, yet really mistaken.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
No, it's a completely different It's not a completely different
color than a spleen. It's a few shades off of red,
but the surface is different. There's loabshape shape, Yeah, there's lobes.
There's two different lobes of the liver. Sometimes there's three.
There's different vessels. It's in a completely different place to
the body. Yeah. I read the suit that they filed formally.

(16:45):
I've just now read it today. It was filed on
the thirtieth of January, and I'm gobsmack. I you hear
me pausing. It's because I'm speechless. I'm still speechless reading
new information that i've that i'm learning about, reading the suits,
the paper of the work that was filed with the courts.

(17:05):
I don't know. I hope he's got a good attorney.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
You mentioned tort reform in Florida, and I looked at
that real quickly, and it's similar to other states in
which they cap damages depending on you know, the level
of negligence or in what happened, whether if someone died
or not, there's a cap I believe at one million dollars.
So when you sue even you know if you're you're
demanding punitive damages. And again in this case, if it's

(17:29):
if it's gross negligence, you know, sometimes depending on the state,
you can seek punitive damages, not just general damages, but
punitive damages are generally when there's you have to have
an it's an intentional tort that permits a punitive damage award,
so you know, reckless disregard. In other words, if this
rises to a criminal level, then I think there's a possibility.

(17:51):
But it looks like in Florida, there's caps on this,
like it's a million dollars. Right, Like I my understanding,
and I'm not an attorney in Florida.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
But right, And I was looking through the court documents
today and the only number I see is fifty thousand,
And I'm like, green, I've not seen the whole length
of it. But yeah, I'm only seeing fifty thousand, which
I know is not going to be correct it it
can't be. And I'm still understanding what tort reform is.
As a nurse, I don't know, the legal jargon still

(18:19):
very well at all.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yeah, whenever you hear that term torte reform, what that
speaks to is it speaks to generally capping damages. So
you know, in civil cases where again, if we're talking
about an intentional torte, an intentional tort is something like,
for example, battery, and this is something that could be
filed if it could be proven that this surgeon kind
of like doctor death, if you recall this guy, you know,

(18:42):
that was an intentional torte. Battery is the legal theory
for that, and so you know, that's an intentional tort
meaning damages are looked at differently. But when we're talking
about negligence, that's not an intentional torte. So because if
it's ordinary negligence, it's just you know, it's considered accidental.
It's like a brief. There's a duty of standard of care, right,

(19:02):
that's that's accepted in the community, and you know, if
a physician breaches that duty, right, and then there's a cause,
there's damages that result from that. For in this case,
like you know, well, in this case the patient died,
but as long as they can prove causation, then they
can seek damages. But again going back to those you know,
I don't know how they're going to it sounds like
the suit they file that's it's going to be gross negligence,

(19:25):
is what they're alleging in the complaint, right is that
the original I don't know if they're also pleading a
battery as well, which again a battery again would be
it sounds strange that you know, well the doctor didn't
like punch the guy, or that's not the context in
which battery is used. If you physically harm somebody, you know,
you injure them and it's intentional, that's a battery basically, m.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
And something else you can educate me on is at
the top of the form I see plaintiff versus all
the defendants. They also see jury trial demanded.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's always that's pled in the complaint. And
that's because that's what you do. You you you know,
if you're filing suit, you demand a jury trial. Right now,
most cases like this may not make it to jury trail.
As we know, the majority of both civil and criminal
cases resolve through either mediation, which is a pre trial

(20:19):
procedure that you know, both parties have to agree to
or you know, there's in some cases there's what's called
the summary judgment motion that gets filed. And in those instances,
if there's no tribal issues, meaning the judge finds there's
no tribal issues of fact, then the judge can actually
dismiss the case, either with or without prejudice. You know,

(20:40):
I'm not saying that will happen here. Obviously, it sounds
like your evidence is fairly always overwhelming here right from
what you're describing. But yes, that ends. Yeah, so you know, again,
then oftentimes, where as we know, these cases will settle
out right the you know, defense, the attorneys for the
defense will make an offer for settlement or you know,
and oftentimes they do settle, but you know, so sometimes

(21:00):
they don't and they go end up going to a
full jury trial. Where again, you know, if I was
had this case, you know, and I was doing this,
I would be looking for I would be filing looking
for ways to file an intentional tort, meaning I want
to I'm going to try to get punies, which are
punitive damages. But and again going back to tort reform, it's
like with tort reform, these can be capped in some

(21:22):
jurisdictions where they put a cap. In other words, you
hear all these like cases like you know, sexual harassment
cases twenty five million dollars set you know jury award
that's a jurisdiction in which tort reform hasn't been fully enacted,
where damages are unlimited, because punitive damages can be they're
an amount that are determined by the jury oftentimes, So

(21:42):
and then if you're an attorney filing sit you're going
to throw a number in there. Sometimes you do, sometimes
you don't, but oftentimes it's in the millions, right, But
generally the jury is the one that makes that we'll
decide that that's an issue of fact that it is
tried by the jury. So yeah, in this case, I
it sounds just like this is a negligence case that
and filed. They don't have I haven't seen the complaint,

(22:02):
so I don't know if there's any other allegations in
the complaint, because it'll they'll plead them in the beginning
of the complaint.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
I can certainly send that link to you when we
come off the podcast. But I've got both the Akka
report and what they filed with the local court system
in Walden County, and it's on four hundred and forty
five pages long. So it's a good bedtime story.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Oh yeah, that's it. Well, I look for it while
we were talking, and I couldn't find an actual cause. Sometimes,
you you know, when the news media is involved, they
will get a copy of the complaint because complaints, you know,
when they're filed in the courts, those are public record.
You can go down to the courthouse and you can
get a copy of those and you can read them.
In most jurisdictions unless there's some type of a gag

(22:47):
we'll put on the complaint, but by the judge. But
you know, in general cases, most cases, you can get
a copy of those.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Joseph Sazar actually put it on his website. Oh okay, yeah,
so that's where I found it. It's it's the latest
blog post you put up discussed in the case. Psychologically,
I wonder where he was at during all of this.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
That's what I want Dana to talk about. I've done
it out talking, you know, again, we've evaluated this guy,
but we can talk heestheticals.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, it's interesting. You know a lot of times I'm
hired by the plaintiff in civil lawsuits, and I'm assessing
psychological damages, like, for example, i'd be hired by the
widow's family to assess her psychologically, and a lot of
times I don't. Actually I'm not assessing the perpetrator that

(23:34):
caused these damages, so doing their psychological evaluation. But I
see all the records and I see a lot of
information that tells me, Wow, this guy, huh. And you know,
the most interesting thing is even when it's a successful
lawsuit for damages, later I'm wondering why did this guy

(23:58):
get charged criminally? And I find that very interesting. But
as far as the psychological traits of some of these individuals,
I see a common theme and it's coming up again
and again. For me, it's not surprising. But I do
all kinds of psychological evaluations across settings, and I see

(24:20):
different things, you know, child custody, right, criminal evaluations, like
all kinds of things, And there are some certain traits
that I find to be quite harmful and narcissistic traits
and people these folks, they don't take feedback at all

(24:44):
very well, and they can be quite retaliatory if you
even attempt to give them any feedback about themselves, like
threatening or challenge. I have personally attempted to give people

(25:05):
feedback when I find that they have, say narcissistic personality disorder.
Sometimes you'll see some antisocial traits in there, or other
traits they disagree with you. Surprise, they will project things
on me, saying I'm wrong or I'm flawed, but they'll

(25:25):
never take personal responsibility. And so the reason why people
should be cleared psychologically before being fit for duty is
that we see some of these traits and I won't
clear people for duty. I have, in fact, came across
profiles recently. Somebody wanted to get into the military and

(25:47):
they had narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and they
had a number of other problems, and I told them
why I wasn't clearing them, And alarmingly, there are a
lot of places that don't use psychologists to clear professionals

(26:10):
to see if they're fit for duty. And I think
it's a huge miss. It's a huge problem. And like
medical doctors, what is the criteria for them? Who is
evaluating them? They're a surgeon and this is a matter
of life and death. They need to be fit. What

(26:32):
are the checks and balances, and I work in surgery
for almost four years. Back in the day, I was
like a glorified secretary, so I saw a lot of things.
I'd go in the surgery room, in and out and anyway.
I ended up deciding that that wasn't a career fuiled
for me. But I observed a lot of the behaviors

(26:54):
of the surgeons. You know, fast forward twenty years, I
became a forensic psychologist and I was actually hired last
year to go back to one of these hospitals because
a surgeon. I needed to do a critical incident debriefing
with the staff in the OER regarding a surgeon who
was acting inappropriately. And it was alarming that I hadn't

(27:21):
been called, that this had been going on for years,
for decades. I just I was in shock what I heard,
what was happening, and the behaviors of this person. And
I can tell you that things were reported, but the
CEO or people in charge that make millions of dollars

(27:45):
by continuing to allow the surgeries to happen was pretty motivating.
So these bad behaviors that were happening, although they were reported,
it still continues to go on, Like what is happening.
How is this person continuing to practice? Who is stopping them?
And I did bile a complaint with the medical board

(28:07):
with the information that I heard, and nothing happened. But
I felt an obligation a duty to warn and I
find it shocking so reading the complaint that was filed
in the court today. They were well aware of this man,
the hospital CEO, the O R managers, everyone was well
aware of his issues. He had the highest volume of

(28:30):
cases every day in that hospital. And so that is
being named in the suit that they kept him working
because of the money he was bringing in. No matter
how much he was hurting people. People died, people died
before this case, and they still had this man working.
And to the fact to what you said about the
psychopathy of surgeons. I know a lot of good physicians.

(28:54):
I know a lot of very reasonable, well adjusted surgeons
and physicians that I would trust with my own life,
in the life of my children. But in the case here,
in some of the cases I personally experienced those few
bad apples. For whatever reason, they're the ones who work
the most. They're the ones who work the most and

(29:15):
as a result, caused the most damage. They're willing to
work and bring in the money. And that's then this
is just my hypothesis. They're willing to work and bring
in the money, so hospitals just okay, we'll just pay
them off, or you know, we'll just slip this under
the rug. That's what has happened here. A hospital continue
to let him work without remedial training or appropriate remedial training,

(29:39):
what they call immediate remedial training. When he took out
the pancreas instead of the adrenal gland, it was part
of a pancreas. What they call a remedial training was
a joke from my perspective. It was six supervised cases
and then going through some online training and testing. That
was it. And then they proceeded to cancel or not
offer that type of surgery at that hospital anymore. So

(30:03):
I still have not found where he even completed six
supervised surgeries to verify that he was competent.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Yeah, and how many six surgeries? I mean, that's are
you going to get a good representation of you know,
general if you're a general surgeon and there's lots of
different surgeries you can do.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Correct.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
Thank you for telling me about the lawsuit on the website.
And by the way, it actually almost caused my computer
to like shut down because it is almost five hundred pages.
This complaint is huge. Whoever put that together was burning
the midnight oil. I looked at the legal theories because
that's why I wanted to see, and yes, they do

(30:44):
have a gross negligence claim included, which gross negligence permits,
at least from what I see in Florida, the recovery
of punitive damages. And that's that's big because punitive damages
are those, you know, damages intended to punish somebody for
you know, again in this case, gross negligence. Again, the
question here is what I'm interested to find out is

(31:06):
whether or not the district attorney in this county, you know,
there will be a criminal investigation, like you said, that's ongoing.
Remember that in criminal cases like this, the burden is high.
They have to prove that his conduct was not just
ordinary negligence, not even gross negligence, but they're going to

(31:26):
have to prove that he acted with such reckless disregard
for you know, the safety of the patient that it
rises to a criminal standard. And so it'll be interesting
to see whether or not. Again, I haven't read. I
don't have access to the investigation, so I would you know,
I wouldn't want to give an opinion about whether there's
enough there. But it's that's worth talking about because what

(31:47):
you're describing here, it does sound like there's evidence supporting this, right,
like in terms of this is not just ordinary negligence
or incompetence. There's conduct and behavior covering things up, for example,
covering up these mistakes, allegedly lying about you know, what
was done in the procedures, those sorts of things, instead
of like taking responsibility and you know, ownership of what happened.

(32:10):
So all of that's going to be certainly looked at,
and so the prosecutor has to determine, like, well, do
we have enough to reach this criminal standard? And then
if you know, again they're looking at it also as
can we get a conviction in a jury trial on
something like this because the burdens are much higher. So anyway,
that's interesting that this case is fascinating in terms of

(32:33):
where it might go, both criminally and civilly.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
It looks like the Walton County Sheriff's Office is actively
investigating the case in collaboration with the state Attorney's office,
the District one Medical Examiner, and the Florida Department of Health.
So when are we going to get when is this
going to go before a grand jury to indict him

(32:57):
on charges? Like what are we waiting for?

Speaker 3 (33:00):
It could go to a grand jury. It depends, you know,
on the prosecutor has discretion generally in these cases to
they can go to the grand jury route, or they
can just if they think they've got enough evidence beyond
a reasonable doubt evidence in other words, they can move
forward and just follow the criminal complaint themselves, you know,
in the district court there.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
So in what cases would they take it before a
grand jury?

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Remember which grand juries? You know, it's not adversarial, and
so you know, when you take a case to the
grand jury, the prosecutor oftentimes they'll do this if they
suspect that, god, this is kind of like, we're not
really sure we have enough, so they let the grand
jury look at the evidence. Remember, the defense isn't available
to repose or refute anything during a grand jury proceeding,

(33:43):
so it's only the prosecutor that's presenting testimony or evidence,
and then the grand jury, you know, will make a
charging decision basically, so they step in the shoes of
the prosecutor basically if they choose to indict or not.
So they're instructed when they're doing this. They know what
the burdens are. So the burden, you know, they make
a charging decision that's based off of is there sufficient

(34:04):
evidence to proceed to trial? Meaning is there probable cause
that a crime has occurred? Right, and this this defendant
is responsible for the commission of that crime. And then
they will decide to indict or not. Now, you know,
again depends on the jurisdiction, but sometimes it's a strategic
you know, decision to let the grand jury do it
because they're saying, well, it's a jury of your peers

(34:26):
that are still they're the ones that are making the
decision to indict. But that doesn't mean he's convicted. That
just means he's going to face trial, right with a
different jury you know that's going to be selected in
the criminal case. So, you know, there's strategic reasons why
a prosecutor may choose to go to the grand jury
with a case versus like just filing it themselves. And
that's something they you know, discuss amongst themselves based on

(34:49):
you know the way of the evidence, the strength of
the evidence they have in the case.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Well, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens on behalf
of the family. I know mister Brian was a very
active per was still living a very full life, and
he had some problems you need to go to the
hospital for. And his wife's actually a nurse. Wow, And
so I think when she I don't know how she
was notified of the mistake, but I think when she

(35:16):
was told that he hemorhationally passed away, something leads me
to believe her spidy senses were up. And especially since
it wasn't just a surgeon that told them the spleen
was taken out. Some of the hospital staff told her
that as well, even though they knew so. On behalf
of the family. I really hope that they get all

(35:36):
of the compensation that they deserve. I hope that this
also wakes up hospital corporations. Doctor death wasn't enough to
wake up hospital corporations, and the CEO being killed was
not enough to wake up hospital at corporations. What's really
going to wake them up? I don't know. To me
from my perspective, I help people hit him in the

(35:57):
pocketbook you know, you're gonna pay some money for this,
and then the poor nurses are going to get new
protocols upon new protocols to follow and more paperwork to
fill out, and they're kind of like, why are we
filling this out? And oh, by the way, some surgeon
and some far off land did this, and so now
we're all filling out more paperwork and it doesn't really help.
So well, let's talk about that pocket book and money,

(36:22):
the hospital administration, the CEO that's raking in millions of
dollars through these surgeries. Like, let's do the math. How
much is a civil suit going to cost them?

Speaker 3 (36:31):
In the end, it goes back to this issue of
tort reform. So you know, like Florida is, you know,
it's a pretty conservative state right overall, So you generally
will see in more conservative or red states you will
see pushes for tort reform. And again, you know, like
trial lawyers associations, which a long time ago, I was
a member of the largest like trial Lawyers Association in

(36:53):
the United States. And of course they you know, they're
staunchly oppose and are you know, do not want to
see tort reform And for obvious reasons, because when you
cap these damages, when you cap the ability of an
attorney to to get you know, punitive damages in the millions.
Like what you're saying data hit them hard, right, But

(37:13):
remember it. You know these administrators generally they're not paying
out of their own pockets. This is the corporation, the
liability carriers who you know are ensuring these hospital systems
that are the ones that are paying out. You know
that it's very rare that you know, any individual is
held personally liable. It's it, you know. And in some cases,

(37:34):
if they're acting outside the scope of practice and you
know they're doing they're violating policies and things like that.
Certain like employers can say, well, we're not going to
indemnify you, meaning you're on your own. Like if you
get sued as an individual, you know, your own med
malpractice policy will be implicated here. And so for this doctor,
he has his own med mal insurance, which in some

(37:56):
jurisdictions they actually do not require doctors to have malpractice insurance.
And it depends on the state. Like you know, there's
I know that in California that some psychologists, for example,
they don't have malpractice insurance. They're not required by a
lot of carrier. I'm not sure about Florida, but there's
pockets of you know, people who are going to pay,
or entities that are going to pay. In this it's

(38:18):
going to be like his med mal policy. I'm sure
he had malpractice insurance. Surgeons malpractice insurance, and some of
the highest I think my understanding is an a caesiologists
and surgeons generally have much higher med mal because you know,
there costs more because obviously risks are much higher, like
risk in this case, surgical errors. Things like that can

(38:39):
cost a lot of money in terms of litigation and
damages and all that kind of stuff when there's negligence involved.
So yeah, they cap it, like I from what I see,
it's looking like they're you know, they might be capped
in Florida. There might be capped at a million dollars
on punitive damages. I'm not sure if there's going to
be some other legal theory they can use to go after,

(39:00):
you know and get a higher damage if you know,
if they're you're trying to seek that. But so in
two thousand and three, I'm just gonna say this real quick,
Florida passed legislation that caps non economic damages that pain
and suffering and med malpractice cases at five hundred thousand
per physicians and one million dollars in cases involving death

(39:20):
or catastrophic injury. Now, again, that's the information that I
can sede. It's publicly available. I'm not sure how that's
being you know, enforced right now. So oh, and then
it looks like the Florida Supreme Court did overturn this.
The statutory scheme was overturned in twenty seventeen, so I'm
glad I looked at that. So it looks like there

(39:43):
might might have been again a case precedent that was
set that overturned this statute. As I'm constitutional, so perhaps
there is a potential for higher non economic damage awards
in the in this case. So so yeah, so they
might be able to get more.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
That's good to know that from whatever I had read
that Florida had cap damages. But what you're telling me
is no, and that the Brian family could be well
compensated for us.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah, it's very possible. Let me just pull the case up.
It looks like this case the title is and I'm
going to verify it North Broward Hospital District versus Calton,
and that's in twenty seventeen. So I'm just going to
look at it real fast. Curious about this. This is
the thing. Just because a law is passed by a
legislature does not mean that it gets upheld, right, I

(40:34):
think In other words, there can be constitutional tests to
the constitutionality of statutes. And in this case, that's what happened.
Looks like they overturned it under a premise that violated
the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. So that
looks like that got overturned. That was the Florida Supreme Court,
it wasn't the US Supreme Court. So interesting North Broward

(40:56):
Hospital District versus Calatin. There's a citation here for that,
so yeah, interesting. Okay, Well there you go. Maybe they
can maybe they're going to be you know, they could
be potentially successful here. And when you talk pianitive vantages,
if there's no caps, you know, someone's life, it can
be very high.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Right, Yes, for sure, I'd like to see some criminal charges.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
How would too, Well, it's Florida, so you very well
may see criminal charges because that's the thing that Florida,
Florida tends to hold people accountable, right if they engage
in criminal conduct and they can prove it, they tend
to get held accountable in Floria, at least, that's my
understanding of Florida. It's a little different in other states.
You can all figure out what I'm talking about. Other

(41:40):
states tend to let things go more often.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Just off the top of my head, reading the autopsy
report and the statements made by medical staff to Akka, again,
he didn't use any clamps, no cross clamping before cutting,
no sutures used to close vessels, no ligature, no carterie,
and then firing a stapler blindly into an abdomen. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
See, so it goes back to the whole issue of training.
So like if he was trained properly on these which
you know, I'm not a surgeon, So if I have
watched surgeries by the way, I've been in the surgical
field so to speak, and have like watched surgeries go on,
like gunshot victims that are where they're they're cauterizing, they're
you know, they're clamping, they're suturing, they're they're stopping internal

(42:26):
bleeding right in organs and stuff. So you know, I've
watched it but uh, you know, it's like if he
was trained properly. You go to medical school, right, I
mean I teach in a medical school, and I medical
students do undergo quite a bit of training right in
this and especially if they're going into surgery. They have
an entire residency, right in several year residency. It's general story.
There's different kinds of surgery, right, But he had to

(42:47):
have been trained on how to do this stuff. Okay,
you got large vessels being severed, clamped this thing. You know,
it's like, you know, stop the bleeding. How did he
not know that? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
I mean just may I don't know, just from my perspective.
So I served as a medic in the army for
six years, and what they taught us is if you
ever have to open up an abdomen, you should not
see blood, find the bleeding and stop it. Not that
I'm doing surgical cases out in the field, but if
I have a gunshot wound or a blast victim, I
need to get the bleeding to stop. So how do

(43:20):
you do that? Find the pulsing vessel and put your
fingers over it and put a clamp on it. Clamp
whatever you find has blood coming out of it. Just
do it.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
That's pretty straightforward. I mean even I think a lay
person might know how to like do that, I don't know, like,
but a surgeon, I mean, come on, I.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Don't like And just backing up to the psychology part
reading some of the statements by the staff is he
was very a very cavalier person, like okay, whatever, And
then there was also a complaint in the document fouled
with the court is in their exact verbiages. He would

(43:59):
often invoke religious symbols and consteps in order to redirect
conversations to playcate patients who had had significant complications following
his surgeries.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
Ooh interesting.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Oh I love that you mentioned this because oh interesting. Yeah,
that's so interesting because I actually see that come up often,
you know, and people can use the God card, the
religious card, anything all of a sudden, right invoke God
because you're not gonna argue with God or if you know,

(44:33):
why would you challenge anybody's religious connections. I have a
thing about that.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
Well again, so the cavalierness. So again we're we haven't
assessed this guy. But again, talking in generalities, we do know,
like both Dana and I, we know a lot about psychopathy.
We deal with psychopaths quite regularly. I've dealt with them
for years, so I'm pretty adept at detecting signals you know,
from psychopaths and terms of their behavior, disposition, and so

(44:59):
generally they is very charming and you know, again like
very approachable and all of that. But they also they
engage in these blame shifting behaviors and oftentimes, you know,
there's a lot of manipulation right in tribute. If they've
done something improper, it's always shifted off to somebody else.
So there's really sophisticated manipulation schemes that they engage in.

(45:20):
We also know that, and this is from the research
from you know Hair who's the psychopathy guru, doctor Robert Hare,
is that the surgeons are overrepresented in the psychopathy base rates.
In other words, we know that the psychopathy is generally
about one percent of the population would meet criteria to
be classified as a psychopath, but surgeons it's much higher

(45:42):
than that. You know, there's estimate that eight percent, I
think is what's in my head, Dan, Do you know
for sure which the percentage is what they've estimated. We
know that surgeons are kind of up at the top
there might want to look at that real quick. But
and CEOs, right, so CEOs or how people that are
high up in business structures, business hierarchies, they're overrepresented as well.

(46:02):
We know that from the research. Not saying we don't
know about this guy specifically.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
No, and I use that word as an uneducated Uh.
The terminology keeps coming to mind when I'm reading the
notes about him.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Well, right, because I mean you look at the behaviors
and so yes, we can see you know, if we
start looking at this kind of manipulative kind of behavior,
pulling the God card out, that kind of stuff, doing
things that shift attention and focus from their mistakes or
from anything that would be you know, once they're at
a focus right of an investigation or something, say that
all the time. So interesting, Yeah, did you get the percentage?

(46:36):
I'm curious now because I I should know this.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Well.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
I saw a study by that twenty twelve found that
surgeons rank among the top ten professions most likely to
track individuals with psychopathic traits. So we know that. I
don't have the exact statistics here, but some of the
traits found insurgeons arelessness, so which is necessary for handling

(47:04):
high risk, high pressure situations, low empathy that can be
useful when performing procedures.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
Yeah, especially if you're Yeah, I mean you have patients
that do die when you're performing surgery on them. So
if you're an EmPATH, right, if you're really high in empathy,
you could be profoundly affected if you don't save somebody, right,
because not everybody survived surgeries, right, I think gunshot victims,
you know, they try, but I've seen several. I've watched
several die in my career on the table, you know,

(47:37):
in the er bay and the trauma bay, you know,
where they're trying to stop the bleed. In the bleeding,
they try to get them a surgery real quick. If
you're an EmPATH, you know that stuff's going to really
impact you. So, I mean it can be adapted to
have some of these traits, So it's not that. Yeah,
we do see those psychopathic traits, and sometimes those are
adaptive for certain professions. You know, cut threight, you know business.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
I've seen it before they even take him to So
I used to work trauma. I see you, but we
took surgical patients as well, and even in this case, uh,
doctor Stubnowski only spent about five minutes with the family
before the surgery, five or ten minutes before the surgery.
So if you're an impact, you're not sitting at bedside
reassuring your patients. You're just telling what you're going to

(48:19):
do and what they're going to do because they have
to do it. And I have seen that so many times.
I had a gunshot victim that I took care of.
One time, his final court had been severed, and so
they weren't going to take in the surgery because it
was inoperable. Right that surgeon refused to come and talk
to him.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
Mm hmm, not surprised.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
I had to call the hospital the medical officer, Hey,
can you come and talk to this guy please. I
can only tell him so much as a nurse, but
I need a medical somebody with a license behind their
name to come and tell this man what he's going
to experience for the rest of his life.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
Right to say he's paraplegic. Probably, yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
And funnily enough, that's a surgeon that I had to
stop taking a patient to surgery because he reaped abolcohol.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
I mean, there are good surgeons out there. I mean,
I don't want to like, oh absolutely, I don't want
to paint it like you know, there are definitely surgeons
that they're empathic and all them.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
We got people canceling their surgeries.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Yeah, they're like, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
I think the ones that have a good rapport with
their patients. There's so many of those, and I've seen
so many of them. But when we encounter those few,
we're just like, yeah, that's the what I remember the most.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, we haven't talked about psych screening and stuff. We've
talked about this another podcast and I know we're getting
towards the end of this, but you know, again, it
also begs the question about whether or not we talk
about how psychologists might benefit Before you become a psychologists,
maybe we should make sure you're actually psychologically healthy and
fit like and in other words, are you fit to
actually do therapeutic interventions and therapeutic work with people, or

(49:48):
are you suffering from severe like personality stuff that would
render you, you know, incompetent in terms of being able
to help other people. And that's an argument that is
going around, but currently we don't do that. Physicians don't
go through any kind of psychological screenings or anything like
that either before they get their medical license. And so
it's one of those things that is interesting because we

(50:09):
don't do that we air traffic controllers. We want to
make sure we psychologically screen those folks, right, lots of
lives are in their hands. So you know, it's an
interesting kind of argument, isn't It's like, huh, I wonder
if some kind of psychological screening should be incorporated here
just because it may or may not catch some of
these highly incompetent personality disordered you know physicians or you

(50:35):
know the doctors who you know who who or who
have substance huge problems that kind of stuff. So anyway,
it's it's something to think about.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Definitely, What were some of the other things that they
ranked high with, like as far as lack of empathy.
High confidence also is a trait that's found insurgeons cold rationality,
helping them make life or death decisions without emotional interference.

(51:04):
So there's certain traits of people that are more prone
to be interested in being these fields of work. And
I always recommend anyone to get a psychological evaluation, just
everyone should at some point in their life to assess
their mental health or well being. And as a psychologist,

(51:26):
I also assess other mental health clinicians. They're referred to
me by the board to evaluate when they're in trouble
or on probation or for certain ethical violations, so I
assess them. I always recommend people before you're court ordered

(51:46):
or before your license is on the line, even before
you start school, talk to a professional, get evaluated, and
just make sure there's something that's If there's something there
that's showing up, even on a lower level, I as
a psychologist can help give you some direction to take
care of these issues, whether it's personality pathology or some

(52:10):
mood disorder or some untreated mental health problem, to get
taken care of, because it'll show up later in a
bigger way. And I can tell you that people that
are high in narcissistic traits or high on psychopathy, they're

(52:35):
not booking appointments with me, by the way.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
Yeah, they don't come into treatment generally unless they're ordered to.
And so this is again why they can go out
and they can do a lot of damage to people
until they're identified and caught. And it's this is why
you know, again, psychopathy is definitely a it's a problem.
I mean it's not that they are psychopaths in all professions.
You know, they're in everywhere. There's psychologists there in all

(53:03):
pretty much all all professions, right, But there's just some
that have higher representations of people who have those traits.
Some of them are adaptive, you know. There's actually, you know,
some research that suggests that some psychopathic traits can be
can be helpful, believe it or not, in some instances,
in some settings. So like, it's not always that it's bad,

(53:25):
but when you combine it with other like you say,
like Dan is talking about the narcissistics, we call it
the tryad of narcissism and machavelianism and these sorts of
things where you have this grandiose sense of like you're perfect,
you're so you're you know, you're so important. You don't
recognize your own faults, you have no insight, and you
end up hurting other people. That's where it becomes a
problem because you don't take ownership for anything. It's like

(53:48):
you make mistakes or you do something wrong, and it's
like you blame shift everything to somebody else and you know, deny, deny,
all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah, I have some cases right now, with folks that
are high and narcissistic traits and and some other traits
to antisocial But they're all court ordered to be seen
by me. And why because they've violated the law. They
have a restraining order, they've maybe lost custody their kids,

(54:20):
there are some other legal problems. I see them a
lot in family law, court court ordered ebels. And here's
the thing. Yeah, they don't take feedback. They disagree with
what you say. They are very resistant to treatment, and
they are usually ordered by the court to participate in treatment.

(54:43):
You know what they do, They don't.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
They pretend to, They pretend to.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
They buy a therapist to like fake documents. I even
have one guy lie and say he did the treatment.
They'll do everything else and so then it becomes more
of problem and they just they're so resistant to seeing
any flaw within themselves and unfortunately it causes more and

(55:11):
more problems for them. And so we don't want these
individuals getting into these career fields because they are in
fact dangerous.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
They are dangerous, yes.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
And I want to talk about these folks on their way.
They're in school and look, school is humbling. I know, Craig,
and I know it's like you get a lot of feedback.
It's tough right on your ego, you feel dumb, so
loo narcissists have a hard time making it through school
and being able to give feedback or correction, and a

(55:48):
lot of times they break the rules and cheat, which
begs the question like some of these folks that are
getting licensed, like how did they right?

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Goes back to the training issue I talk about, which
is like I'm just baffled about, Like going back to
this particular doctor, I would love to see what his
training history is, training records look like, was he like
incompetent and did did he barely get through you know,
his residency or you know, was he this gold star
you know surgeon, because there's quite a bit of variability

(56:21):
right in terms of confidence level when we're talking about
you know, surgery. I mean it's presumably very complex to
you know, conduct you know, to perform surgery, depending on
you know what what organs you're talking about. So that's
just what I would love to see that And it's
going to come out in Discovery for sure, they're going
to they're likely going to get all those records.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Well we haven't, we haven't even had a chance to
look through the entire five hundred page suit that they filed.
I wonder if it's buried in there. I'll definitely be
reading tonight.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
It could be buried in there. I Like I said,
I my computer and I have a very like I
have a gaming computer. It's very fast, and this thing
took a while to down, like it was having trouble
because it's almost five hundred pages. It's like that is
a very very large company.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
I want to shout out to the pair of legals
and the illegal team that put this together because this
is a very uh thick document.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Yeah exactly WHOA that took a while to put together, right,
But they're using AI to help them, but it's.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Like, oh my god. So lastly, Shannon, share with us.
You're a license nurse, you work with other nurses. There
were plenty of licensed professional staff who during these procedures
made observations, they saw things, and you know, maybe they

(57:46):
they changed their documentation or they did certain things like
tell me your thoughts. So there are nurses named in
this case, one of which is being named specifically because
she didn't label the specimen as a liver. But from reading,
like I said earlier, from reading the documentation. In her statement,
she was pressured by the surgeon to write to keep

(58:08):
the label's spleen on the container. There are numerous statements
by the nurses who attended this case is that they
wouldn't bring their family members to have surgery by him.
Some even stated that they were very uneasy about the
timing of the case because it was scheduled in the
late afternoon and it was called a skeleton crew, which

(58:32):
I'm not sure exactly what that means, but from what
I understand, it wasn't a second surgeon our hand or
a PA to assist in the case. It was another
nurse who was holding retractors. The scrub nurse at one
point did state that he never asked for any clamps.
He never asked for any luggasher or any other pieces

(58:56):
of equipment to stop bleeding. There were additional nurses called
into the case while mister Bryant was open to assist
in handling the bowel. So I they do state or
that the attorney states that nurses did not raise alarm
to the fact that doctor Schevnowsky was operating on the

(59:17):
wrong side of the abdomen. However, I'm wondering if that's
going to come into question because the statements given by
the nurses, they couldn't see anything because they were managing
this large bowel that was spilling out of the abdomen
and they were having to work to keep healthy. While
he was working. There was only one nurse that was
able to see into the abdomen. And I do call
into question what she stated because he used ligature to

(59:40):
clamp vessels when quite obviously on autopsy that was not
the case. They didn't find anything clamped or sutured or carterized.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
So she said that he did that, Yes, she did
so again, that's yeah, that is obviously a misstatement. And
I'm assuming are there any sort of video surveillance in
these surgery suites? Now? Do they? In other words, do
they record the surgeries? Like is are there any cameras
in the surgery suites? I don't know if there are.
I'm just curious.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
I haven't seen that there are. I don't ever remember
knowing that they are, because remember I used to work
at that hospital, and I definitely think they would have
pulled the footage. I do see where they were even
pulling the documentation on who badged in and badged out
of the surgery theater, so obviously if it's there, they
they'll be using it in the case. So back to

(01:00:31):
the nurses. They are stating that why didn't they stop
him from operating on the wrong side of the body,
And I think a defensible point is that they couldn't see,
and that's a frequent multiple nurses state that they couldn't
see anything because there was such a large bowel in
a way, and they were helping maintain the bowel, and
once the code started, they were all running around trying
to get blood. They had two cell savers going doing

(01:00:54):
chest compressions, probably getting blood from the blood bank. So
you cease all help and you do the chest compressions,
of which there was more visibility into the abdomen because
of all the blood.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
As he went and cardiac arrest right. He probably arrested
right and correct.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
And so that's when doctor should Nazi took out the
livers when he couldn't even see. So that'd be interesting
to see from that perspective why they named the nurses,
But of course they probably did it just to bring
everybody in. They're gonna name everybody, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
They're gonna name everybody. Everyone's gonna get named, and then
you know, as the case progresses. Generally in these cases
will happen is as they do, as they take depositions
and they go through discovery, they will if there's evidence that, Okay,
this defendant clearly has no liability in this, they will
usually dismiss them. They will get a dismissal, they will
dismiss them from the case. But yeah, I think the

(01:01:52):
general strategy, as you you know usually in these cases
is they're going to name everybody that's present in that
surgical like eat the surgical field and all that we're participating,
and then discovery is where they figure out, you know,
where the liability lies, you know specifically well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
And I also feel like their hands were tied immediately
after the case because when you're a nurse and there's
an accident made, you are told not to talk to anybody, correct,
you do not blink the wrong way, you don't approach
the family. So I do hope they drop this against
the nurses because I also know from personal experience that

(01:02:32):
when a surgeon's coming at you, you don't try to
fight back.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
You don't verbally oh yeah, there's a there's a hierarchy,
absolutely right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
So I really truly hope that because I do know
some of the nurses personally, and I know that my heart,
my heart goes out to them. Can you imagine being
named in this case? That just scare the pants off
of me.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
But terrible. Yeah, when anytime you get leaned to the lawsuit.
I mean, I don't know if Dane has been sued,
but I've ensued, you know, as a doctor, I've ensued,
and it yeah, it's stressful because again you don't know
if this if cases go to duria trial, you just
don't know what's going to happen. And some cases are frivolous,
not all cases, but have merit. But anytime you get sued,
it's tremendous stress, you know, because again, yes you'll likely

(01:03:16):
be indemnified, but you know, like I said, there's some
cases where in numiplication may not entirely protect you, and
judgments may be levied against you as an individual as
well practice, you know, so that's where your your malpractice
insurance comes into play. I don't think nurses have to
have malpractice insurance, is that correct? Unless you're a nurse
practitioner maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
No, we don't.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Yeah, you generally don't, but doctors do so.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Right, So I didn't see where they viewed any of
the nurse's documentation, not yet. I haven't seen that or
even naming it. I do see where they repeatedly say
in both the Oka report and the suit filed is
that doctor Chabnovsky's history of incorrectly documenting surgeries in the
past was even poor and this case was grievously poored.

(01:04:03):
Didn't even identify the word mega colon which this gentleman had,
which placed him at risk for surgical complications, meaning he
should have been at a higher level of care because
mer mar b is the Sacred Heart Hospital and Mimember
is a small community hospital. It's not very big. We
actually they did not have many services. We would wind

(01:04:24):
up transferring them out to a higher level of care
to receive services such as zurology services or gasruline testinal services.
That they had a g a gashuine testinal bleed, and
then their nurses did say, why are we doing a
spleen here? He stated he had done three or four
splains there, but they found out he had not done
a splein there. Splains can bleed fast and quick. And

(01:04:44):
then with the surgical complication of the mega colon, this
is not a patient they should have touched in this hospital.
And the nurses go to say that extensively, every single
one of them make that statement, why are we doing
this here? It goes back to his documents. They really
hammer that in both reports, is that his documentation, both
in the past and on this case were always wrong.

(01:05:08):
Nothing was ever documented very well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
The hospital knew the hospital is going to be on
the hook for this one, for sure. I mean there's
liabilities going to extend out to just you know, the
hospital and the physician, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
But I did know where I come into play, So
I did not look at this case as a legal
nurse consultant. I'm just coming in as a lay person
looking at the documentation available to me online. But as
a legal nurse consultant, if I was handed a case
like this, we're creating chronologies. Okay, So what time did
everything start? From the time he walked into the er
with its first complaint to statements from the nurses his

(01:05:43):
vital signs. One of the reasons doctor Shanowski used to
convince the family to have this surgery was that he
was clinically unstable. He was not clinically unstable. His vital
signs speak to that, his laboratory reports speak to that.
That's something I would find and put in to a
spreadsheet showing Okay, this time, this time, and this time,

(01:06:04):
all these things happened, marking even the place in the
medical record you can find it, and then how things
happened in the ore. A lot of nurse consultants, I've
not done it yet, but we actually help attorneys come
up with questions to ask people they're deposing. Some nurse
consultants will sit in on the deposition and help the

(01:06:26):
attorney respond with relevant questions. It's actually something I really
like to do.

Speaker 3 (01:06:32):
Yeah, that's fun part. Yeah, I enjoy that as well
as far as like from the psychological stuff, we can
provide that expertise as well to lawyers.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Right right, bring me in there. I would love to
ask the surgeons some questions. Right, I got some good
questions for you. Right. We know how to disarm a narcissist.
I would love to learn how to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
We also know how to trigger them, right to get
responses that would demonstrate like, oh, this person just became
unhinged during their deposition.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
I would love to be a fly on a walder
his deposition, and I would love to see him deposed
with a psychologist. But going back to that, I generate reports.
I generate very detailed reports telling the story of exactly
what happened from point A to point B until the
discharge of the patient or the death with diagrams definitions.
I generated a sixteen page report on a guy who

(01:07:20):
had compartment syndrome that was missed, and I narrowed it
down to pain and suffering of twenty six hours. This
complication went twenty six hours of not being diagnosed, and
I was able to lay that all out for the
attorney without him having to go through thousands of pages.
Sometimes these medical records are four or five thousand pages long.
Give me that job, Let me do that. That's my jam.

(01:07:43):
I want to dig in there. I want to do
the investigation. I just found this gold nugget. Ooh, let
me tell you about it, and I'm gonna give you
a really detailed report on it, and I'm going to
provide the studies and the standards of care to back
that up.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
So that is the fun part of this right like that.
I mean, I agree with you that I enjoy that
kind of work as well. It's investigator, but it's all
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
I also like finding when healthcare professionals did their job
to the very best of their ability and that they
served the patient and the family.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
I love those cases because sometimes families bring in a
case and they say, I don't know what happened. Something
must have happened. Dad was okay a few days ago,
and then I dig into the medical chart and I say, oh, well,
the facility did everything they could, but sadly it was
just dad's time, or there was past medical history the
family had no idea about. A lot of people keep

(01:08:33):
thanks from their families that they don't know about and
it leads to their demise. And I'm very thankful to
be able to share that information to the family because
I feel like it gives them closure. I've done them
a couple of times that not every case that's handed
to me is a slam dunk. We're going to get everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
Sometimes I would say a third of the cases that
I review, thousands of pages long, is simply there was
nobody netledged it just happened. There was an accident they
coded at home. The fact they made it to the
facility as a miracle. So I like those cases too,
and I have work defense before. I have defended facilities.

(01:09:12):
I'm very glad to do that because while we've been
bashing on a physician in here, I really love portraying
the good work that physician and nurses do because nursing
and working in a hospital is a physician is hard.
You're dealing with death every single day. Pain. They call

(01:09:34):
it a cute moral injury. I mean, you get burned out,
but you still keep pushing and you still keep serving
because you love people. And there's so many hospital physicians
and nurses who do that. Housekeepers are techs, lab assistants, pathology,
they all see it and they still go to work
day in and day out when most people couldn't hack it.

(01:09:55):
And I love proving that. I love proving that people
did receive the very best of care that was possible.
So I just want to put that in there because
we have poor doctor Showtowski. He's going to be hiding
under a rock for the rest of his life. But
and I really want to speak to the nurses, and
I do want to say this aside the nurses and

(01:10:18):
physicians as Sacred Hot Hospital and the Airmorald Coast are
some of the best I've ever worked with. I worked
there for six years because I loved working there, the
charge nurses, and I have to reveal my husband was
hospitalized there with COVID and they all did the very
best they could by him, the physicians, they were all
so wonderful to him. So that's evidence. I drove an
hour to take my husband to a hospital that I

(01:10:41):
worked at because I love that hospital, and so I
just yeah, that's all I had to say. Well, Shannon,
I would love to work with you on a case,
any case that comes up to have you just review
those thousands of pages of medical records. And I appreciate
you sharing the work that you do and I'm highlighting

(01:11:04):
the importance of it, and so thank you. Let people
know just where they can find you if you want
to hire a legal nurse consultant. The best place to
reach me right now is on LinkedIn under the name
Shannon boyat Real Simple no E on the end of
Boyott send me a message. I did put a phone
number in one of my posts, but I'm still getting

(01:11:26):
that all together. So I'm always more than happy for
people to just reach out and ask me questions. I
do merit review. I do the long investigative reviews with reports,
and then I can also suggest who you should hire
as a witness, an expert witness, both physicians and nurses
depending on the specialty that was involved in the case,

(01:11:49):
and I can find those people for you. I know
that's super hard sometimes to find the expert witness for
a specific issue that you might be dealing with. So yeah,
I think that's it. And I don't have a hard
and fast rule of how I produce a work product.
I do what you asked me to do. If you

(01:12:09):
want a report, I give it to you all. If
you don't want to report, you just want a verbal conversation.
That's how I work too. I tailor my services to
the individual attorney's needs. Thank you so much, And of
course you can consult with any of us at any time.
You can book a console at psychologydoctor dot com. That's
psychology dr dot com. You can find all of us

(01:12:32):
on that website. You can click and book online and
book a thirty minute console or an hour if you
have a legal case and you need help or feedback.
I encourage you to do that. One hour of your
time can help direct you and give you feedback about
your case. And then if you want to retain us

(01:12:53):
in any capacity, we can go from there. But thank you,
doctor Weber, Thank you sham A Boyett. I really appreciate
your legal expertise. Thank you for having me, I really
appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
Yes, thank you. It's a great conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
Thank you for listening to Killer Psychologist. To watch full
video episodes or if you want to interact with me,
you can find Killer Psychologists on YouTube. You can also
get notified of new episodes by signing up in my
stand store. Now, if you want to work with me,
you can book a console. My website is psychologydoctor dot com.

(01:13:35):
That's psychologydr dot com.