• Government
• Profession
• Business
• Opinion
• Health

• Health reform
• H1N1
• P4P
• EMRs
• Medicare
• Liability
• AMA House
• » More

• Book Excerpt
• Business Pitch
• Meetings
• » More

• Contract Language
• Ethics Forum
• In the Courts
• Practice Management
• Technically Speaking
• » More

• Issue dates
• Regions
• Health plans
• Sections
• News briefs
• Columns
• Editorials
• Letters
• Writers
• Other years

• Search tips
• E-mail alert
• Radio
• RSS
• Mobile
• Subscribe
• Institutions
• Staff directory
• Advertising
• Permissions
• Reprints
• News media
• Site guide
• Useful links
• About
• Premium
• Contact

Bully case verdict a warning to doctors

An Indiana jury handed a six-figure award to a perfusionist, but the physician accused of bullying is appealing the verdict.

By Damon Adams, amednews staff. April 18, 2005.

• PRINT|
• E-MAIL|
• RESPOND|
• REPRINTS|
• SHARE

When a jury recently ordered an Indiana heart surgeon to pay $325,000 to a hospital employee on a claim of "workplace bullying," experts who have studied the subject said it was a significant decision in a growing, yet murky, area of law.

The case may make physicians re-examine how they interact with co-workers as the courts begin to legally define what constitutes workplace bullying.

For physicians, there remain plenty of unanswered questions: Would an employee consider a doctor a bully for yelling at him or her while the doctor is trying to save a patient's life in the emergency department? Or is that considered acceptable behavior in a hospital during a stressful situation?

Workplace analysts and health care attorneys are not predicting a wave of bullying-related lawsuits based on the Indiana case. But they say it might embolden employees to take action if they believe they are receiving rude and abrasive treatment.

"[This case] does have real implications for how doctors treat their co-workers. It sends a message to doctors that if you step over a certain line of decency, you could find yourself in trouble," said David Yamada, professor of law at Suffolk University Law School in Boston and director of the school's Project on Workplace Bullying and Discrimination.

In the Indiana lawsuit, filled in 2002, Joseph E. Doescher claimed that Daniel H. Raess, MD, yelled at him on Nov. 2, 2001, when both worked at St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers in Beech Grove, Ind. The suit said Dr. Raess, a heart surgeon at St. Francis, came toward Doescher, a perfusionist, who backed up and put out his hands to protect himself. The hospital was not named in the suit.