Hurricane doctor suspended for 6 months-Dying patient received muscle-paralyzing drug
The state Board of Medicine has suspended a Hurricane doctor for six months after he gave a dying patient a muscle-paralyzing drug as part of “end of life” care.
Dr. Sean DiCristofaro will start serving his suspension Friday. DiCristofaro told the medical board he administered the drug after the patient was gasping for breath and his wife requested that everything be done to “keep him comfortable,” according to a consent order signed by the doctor.
Board of Medicine members concluded that DiCristofaro’s use of the drug on a dying patient was inappropriate and violated medical ethics, even though some doctors believe the drug may be appropriate for dying patients in “rare circumstances.”
DiCristofaro, who’s still practicing this week, referred questions Wednesday to his lawyer, Ted Martin, who declined comment.
Martin said the doctor wasn’t commenting out of respect for the patient’s family.
“It’s resolved,” Martin said. “At this point, it’s a closed matter.”
Last May, DiCristofaro told medical board investigators that, in hindsight, his use of the muscle-paralyzing drug Norcuron was an “error in judgment” and that he would not do it again, according to a medical board consent order.
The patient, who was in the intensive-care unit at CAMC Teays Valley Hospital, had advanced alcoholic liver disease. His wife and children had given “do not resuscitate” orders, according to medical board records.
The critically ill patient died on Jan. 4, 2007, about eight minutes after DiCristofaro administered the drug.
In response to the medical board’s complaint against him, DiCristofaro initially said his use of the neuromuscular-blocking drug on the dying patient “was appropriate palliative care under the unique circumstances of a patient suffering from agonal gasping whose death was clearly imminent.”
A doctor from East Carolina University School of Medicine submitted a report on DiCristofaro’s behalf, saying there’s an ethical basis for the use of muscle-paralyzing drugs on sedated patients in rare circumstances to allow them a “peaceful and comfortable” death.
But the Board of Medicine found that the drug’s use didn’t meet the “prevailing standard of medical and ethical care.”
DiCristofaro told board members he wasn’t trying to hasten the patient’s death by administering the drug, but wanted to ease the patient’s pain while he was gasping for breath. DiCristofaro, a family doctor who graduated from Marshall University’s School of Medicine and has been practicing since 1999, said the situation was “clinically difficult and emotionally painful and weighed heavily upon him.”
The Board of Medicine’s complaint committee launched an investigation against DiCristofaro after CAMC Teays Valley Chief Executive Officer Al Michaels sent a letter to the board about the patient’s death and the doctor’s use of the muscle-paralyzing drug.
During the investigation, the committee interviewed health-care professionals, the patient’s family members and medical ethics experts.
In the hours before the patient died, DiCristofaro also gave the patient morphine and other narcotic pain medications to ease pain.
The Board of Medicine does not disclose patients’ names, ages or addresses.
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200802130764?page=2&build=cache
I have had the honor of having Dr DiCristofaro as my family doctor for ten years, and consider him the best doctor I have ever known. No other doctor would take the time to personally know and understand their patients and their needs. He is the very definition of what a family doctor should be. The fact that the board would even investigate this complaint, much less issue a suspension, is a slap in the face of every patient. Put yourself in the place of that dying patient, or worse, in the place of the wife, and imagine what it would be like to have a doctor too afraid of board action to help aleive this horrible suffering. Shame on you, board members, for even considering this complaint, and shame on you, Mr Michaels, for filing this complaint against the only worthwhile doctor at CAMC Teays Valley. You are really making progress in turning the hospital back into the old Putnam General that earned such a miserable reputation.