Texas Nurse Prosecuted for Daring to Report Actions of Bad Doctor

A nurse recently found herself facing felony prosecution for making an anonymous complaint about the unsafe practices of a doctor at the hospital where she worked in the small town of Kermit, Texas.

Anne Mitchell and two fellow nurses became concerned about the conduct of Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr. not long after he joined the staff of their public hospital in 2008. After repeated complaints to hospital administrators went ignored, Mitchell and another nurse drafted a letter to the state medical board, citing six particular cases of concern. In one of these, Arafiles had performed a skin graft in an emergency room without surgical privileges, and the procedure failed. In another, he sutured a rubber tip to a crushed finger, for which he was later reprimanded by the Department of State Health Services. The nurses also complained that Arafiles was e-mailing patients about an herbal remedy that he sold outside his professional capacity.'

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