The state Board of Registration in Medicine has revoked the license of a 54-year-old Faulkner Hospital cardiologist and internist after finding that he engaged in a sexual relationship with a female patient who was also a co-worker.
Dr. Gary Brockington, who has been affiliated with Faulkner since 1990, will have until Dec. 11 to close his practice “in an orderly fashion,” according to a statement released by the board this week.
Comments
Where's the problem? Maybe a fallout from the hospital, but she was a co-worker first.
Must be more to the story. On the face of this it seems harsh.
This seems messed up. She was a coworker, they had an affair...and he loses his medical license? What?
Sounds to me like Dr. Brockington is being screwed by some small-minded Mass Parochialists. It is the Board of Registration in Medicine's job to ensure that medical care in Mass is high quality, not to be prying into in the personal and/or sexual lives of their supervisees. You have no business being in Doctors bedrooms. Get out. And use the time for your real job.
More than 20 years of practice without a single complaint and a set of circumstances that would try any normal human being, a romantic error, and a man's career is ended? I hope the appeal is successful, if this is all they've got.
This was one of the nicest doctors I've ever worked with. He was well loved and well respected throughout the Faulkner. Seems wrong, somehow.
The Board of Registration is enforcing politically correct sexual morality. Perhaps it comes from Catholic religious beliefs that they feel they have a mandate from God to apply to everyone else, perhaps they are married members who get nothing at home and are subconsciously jealous of Dr. Brockington, perhaps they are simply showing their power, perhaps it's good old-fashioned Yankee Protestant Puritanism, or, perhaps it's simply an outgrowth of extremist feminism's decades-long campaign to exact maximum punishment to any men who serves more than one women at a time. But what the Board is demonstrating with this action is that their concern is NOT for patient safety and well being. I suspect there is a personality aspect to this as well -- that Dr. Brockington perhsp does not want to kiss the ring of the Board, perhaps he gives off a sense of independence and lack of responsiveness to shaming?
If I were to try to sum it up in one word it would be this: disgusting.
The powers that be should look into this (are you listening, Governor)?
He appointed the people who made this decision. He wants a tough board.
If the circumstances are as stated in the story, the doctor being stripped of his medical license is far too extreme. The purpose of boards composed of human beings is to weigh the circumstances of each case and reach a just decision. If the board is going to hold to a list of rules no matter the circumstances, then they're not needed. A clerk could do that job.
Consenting adults engaging in sex. This is 2012 America. We have a high divorce rate and no nationally accepted definition of marriage. Give it a rest and spend more time cleaning the sexual predators out of our public schools.
A pissed off ex-wife (or similar) gets to make a phone call and ruin a career in the worst, most difficult of times imagineable, and the medical Board, that bastion of non-critical thought and unfettered power without answerabilty, takes it upon themselves to see how far in they can dig the knife. We're all so much safer now...
Dr. Brockington is a man of integrity. I am sure there is more to the story.