Patients recount medical horrors under care of military doctors, with no legal recourse

A Green Beret’s terminal Stage IV cancer. An airmen’s routine appendectomy turns fatal. A judge advocate general suffers multiple miscarriages. These are samples of medical cases gone awry under the care of military doctors.

But it doesn’t stop there: Patients and their families aren’t allowed to sue for medical malpractice. A special legal shield, known as the Feres Doctrine, blocks military servicemembers and their relatives from seeking recourse in court.

Alexis Witt painfully recounted to lawmakers the 2003 death of her husband, Air Force Staff Sgt. Dean Patrick Witt, following a surgical procedure.

Following Witt’s appendectomy at Travis Air Force Base in California, a nurse administered a lethal dose of fentanyl and incorrectly inserted a breathing tube into his esophagus. Witt subsequently suffered from respiratory and cardiac arrest and died after being left in a vegetative state for three months.

Witt’s wife said the same nurse was linked to at least three other deaths, including one before her husband died. “If the appropriate action had been taken on this nurse during her first lethal, negligent episode, Dean would still be alive today,” Witt told lawmakers.

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/patients-recount-medical-horrors-under-care-of-military-doctors-with-no-legal-recourse-1.579146