Trial by media - Turning physicians into villains

It is a controversial and divisive topic this week, where we dive into the world of physicians on trial by media and the decimation of their identity.

Some will argue that if a physician is under investigation for doing anything wrong then the public should be made aware of it. On the other side you have people believing that until the investigation is over it should remain private.

Who is right?

In the world of media it doesn’t matter what the answers are because it is about the power of the story and what will sell more.

For years there has been this fascination with medicine and what really goes on behind the curtain, we see this playing out on multiple tv shows across the globe. So, when a real life physician is accused of something, it is like you have just painted a bullseye on their back for investigative journalists to now find out everything about them and try to sell more stories.

Why make them villains though?

Because bad news spreads faster than good, and the worse the story is, the more they sell.

This is a subject we don’t often talk about in the marketing world to clients because it isn’t cool and it is also a really scary place in all honesty. But it’s time we lift the lid for the sake of all the physicians who have had their entire lives ruined by the media, yet were found innocent in the end.

So let’s dive in.

Physicians have long been accused of medical malpractice, with the highest claims being for procedure errors, poor outcomes, wrongful death, failure to treat and medical related injury.

If a patient has experienced an error or a colleague has a concern, they should of course notify somebody about this. However, does it cross the line if the accused is then named in the media or in any public forum, prior to the accusation being proven against them?

When I have spoken to physician’s who have been named in the media, with some having been accused of some extremely serious claims, they all say the same thing “they have ended my career already”. Fighting it didn’t really matter as they felt it was all over by that point anyway. Their name was all over the internet and people talking about them, they were looked at differently now and this shadow will haunt them forever. Colleagues and past patients suddenly questioning and wondering if this physician is guilty of this claim against them.

Some physicians were removed from their positions in the hospitals while the claims were investigated, named and shamed in the media and being advised not to discuss an ongoing investigation as “they could harm the investigation”.

According to the American Medical Association (AMA), in the US, 1 out of 3 physicians will be sued for medical malpractice, with defendants prevailing at trial with a ratio of 9 out of 10 cases.

With over 1 million practicing physicians in the US, that is around 350,000 physicians who will be sued, and those over the age of 54 there was a one to one claim rate.

This isn’t just an issue in the US though.

The Guardian Newspaper in the UK wrote an article last year (2023) where it quotes the Medical Protection Society:

"of 197 doctors investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC) in the last five years:

• 31% said they had suicidal thoughts.
• 8% had quit medicine and another 29% had thought about doing so.
• 78% said the investigation damaged their mental health.
• 91% said it triggered stress and anxiety”

The article goes on to say “29 doctors died between Jan 2018 and Dec 2020 while the GMC was investigating them”.

These same stories pop up throughout Europe too.

In Ireland, the Irish Examiner wrote an article in June 2024, where it stated:

among the 117 doctors investigated over five years, some 77% saw a negative impact on mental health and 93% experienced stress and anxiety……. 24% considered quitting, 10 left or retired early and 12% experienced suicidal thoughts during the investigation.

It goes on to add that “one doctor experienced an unwarranted complaint that took the Medical Council 7 years to deal with”.

This paints an ugly picture of the investigating bodies harsh handing of these situations but also how this then affects the real lives behind them.

Now add on top going through a trial by media at the same time. The accused seeing their name plastered on websites with nasty headlines and nothing proven at that point, knowing that people are judging them.

It doesn’t even matter where we look, the process is the same and it is brutal. Only leaving behind the remnants of what was a physician, trying to fight an unfair battle from the very beginning. Only to come out the other side with a question mark above their head that says “do you think I did what they accused me of?”.

I spoke with a woman from Italy a few months ago, she reached out to me and told me her story about being accused of manslaughter, so I immediately jumped on a call with her. She explained that she had been a surgeon practicing in Italy and a few years ago she was accused of the manslaughter of her patient. The media picked up the story while she was being investigated and put her name and picture everywhere saying she killed a patient.

She was suspended while they investigated what happened and during this time, she was left unpaid and needing help from others to cover her bills. As well as this, she had no support from anybody she worked with and was left isolated. The investigation lasted a couple of years and eventually she was fully cleared when it was proven she had done no harm to the patient. She was invited back to the hospital she was suspended from, but it wasn’t the same anymore.

She told me that anxiety just kept hitting her and she was full of fear when she would go into surgery. She felt people were judging her and she just couldn’t work as she once did. She subsequently left medicine as she couldn’t continue anymore. What was once a bright and thriving surgeon looking back at themselves, was now someone they didn’t recognise anymore.

I wish this story was unique for those who have been through an investigation, but it isn’t. These physicians wanted a voice so I said I would write about it and shine a light on this horrendous situation and hope to highlight the seriousness of trial by media and the lives it takes along the way.

A few weeks ago I saw a post on LinkedIn written by a healthcare administrator who is labelled as a “Top Voice in Healthcare”, she had uploaded an article about a physician who has been accused of murdering his wife. She wrote about how she once interviewed this physician and saw “red flags”.

There has been no trial and yet his personal information and discussions about him are there for all to scrutinise. If somebody at this level and voice of authority feels it is ok to find somebody guilty by media then what hope do we have for the rest of society? Once again, at this point guilty or not it’s irrelevant because in the eyes of others he is. The only thing left to fight for is freedom but has no option to have his life back if found not guilty.

The message being sent to physicians is if you make an error, or somebody wants to accuse you of something even if you did no wrong, then you could lose your career and reputation overnight, as well as that your identity can be tarnished throughout the media and in public forums with very little way to repair that damage.

For decades physicians have been abused, taken advantage of, and disposed of like they are nothing but garbage. This is just yet another way that physicians are at risk, so is it really that hard to understand why so many leave, suffer with poor mental health or attempt to take their own lives.

Pushing these investigations into the media or elsewhere in public is because it sells and gets attention. There is no other reason to put someone’s life on public display in this way except for clickbait, this isn’t for transparency, patient safety or justice.

For a fair investigation and for real justice to prevail there must be protection for all involved, rather than a self-fulfilling prophecy where some of those who were accused and now cleared, are now either prone to errors because they are stressed out of their mind and anxious, leave medicine or die by suicide. For those physicians, it never mattered if they did wrong or not, they still lost everything because of how the investigation was handled and the stigma that came with it.

There seems to be a feeling in society that physicians are always at fault, so there will always be a bias when headlines like, “doctor death kills elderly woman” or “patient left paralysed by anaesthetist” as they are taken as truth. They are already guilty and anytime a patient puts their doctors name into a search engine, that story will come up even if they were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Clinical practice comes with an enormous amount of responsibility, as well as the need to make some extremely difficult decisions for patients. It is easy to see how any investigation could impact a physician’s performance and overall health, let alone an investigation that is being publicised with everyone waiting for them to make a mistake.

Now there are also a lot of physicians who are also trying to grow their brand outside of clinical practice. They are putting medical information and knowledge in the world to grow their authority, with little regard to the implications this can have on their personal and professional career, simply because they didn’t know how to protect themselves from being sued.

Actually, most don’t even realise they could get sued for their 30 second video clip they put out on social, yet here they are accused of medical misinformation and getting sued because someone took their advice and something bad happened.

Brand damage can just as easily come from non-clinical environments as well, so to limit this happening, they must ensure they are staying within the safe limits for their knowledge sharing in the media which can be a balancing act sometimes.

Overall, we need to appreciate that physicians do have it harder than the average Joe when it comes to things like trial by media and they also have the highest mountain to climb when they try to rebuild from where they left off.

However, it is never the end of the road for them, they just need a plan to put one foot in front of the other today and work up from there.