Blog - Page 46

Murkiness in the Standards of Care and Maintaining Your Dental License

February 28, 2020Posts

The concept of “minimum standard of care” has gone a long way toward causing damage to the livelihood of many Texas dentists. Particularly where the standards of care as established in guiding documents are murky or unclear, dentists can find themselves being held to what appeared to be only recommendations, with their livelihoods on the line. The minimum standard of care is a legal concept that basically describes the quality and type of treatment that...

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Protecting Your Medical License When a Patient Falsely Claims Improper Relationship

February 27, 2020Posts

Ever since the days of Hippocrates—who included in his famous physician’s oath the words, “In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction, and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men […]” — the concept of improper relationships in doctor-patient interactions has been a topic of concern. In today’s society, we may be seeing...

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The Large-Scale Downside to Overzealous Medical Board Discipline

February 26, 2020Posts

While the Texas Medical Board, like other medical boards across the nation, has been established with the explicit goal of promoting and ensuring patient safety, there are times its actions go too far. A state’s citizens are safest when the state has a proper ratio of fully-practicing physicians to the number of potential patients. Which is to say, where disciplinary actions taken by medical boards serve to either dissuade qualified professionals from becoming practicing physicians...

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Steps that Can Keep Manipulative Patients from Endangering Your Medical License

February 25, 2020Posts

Every medical professional will, in the course of performing their profession, encounter patients who are, for lack of a better term, manipulative. Often these cases will involve either people who are in search of attention via misguided means, or perhaps (in a distressing sign of our times) attempting to get their hands on excess or unnecessary narcotic medications. The problem is that manipulative people may go to extremes in order to get what they want—up...

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How Can an Attorney’s Handling of Evidence Endanger Their License?

February 24, 2020Posts

The handling of evidence is a sacrosanct thing in the field of law. A case is generally made up of evidence and the narratives put forth by each side based on that evidence with the purpose of showing that their client’s case is the more legitimate side in the matter. Which is to say that where each side in a case is building a metaphorical structure, the evidence at issue within the case is the...

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What Constitutes Violation of Duty of Care for Attorneys?

February 23, 2020Posts

Our fellow Texas attorneys know well just how much work goes into qualifying for a law license in the state of Texas. And rightly so—the practice of law is laden with responsibilities and with the requirement that attorneys adhere to a high standard of conduct in every aspect of life. An accusation that one has failed to meet this standard of conduct can mean disbarment by the Texas State Bar—and a corresponding loss of livelihood....

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Prescriptions and Family Members: a Danger to Your Medical License

February 22, 2020Posts

While it is permitted for Texas physicians to both treat and prescribe medicines to their family members, as well as to friends or employees, the Texas Medical Board is likely to look askance in particular situations. One such situation—perhaps the most publicly scrutinized at the moment—is the prescription of controlled substances. The Texas Medical Board has established rules governing the prescription of controlled substances to family members and others close to a physician in Chapter...

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How Errors in Trust Accounts Endanger the Professional Licenses of Attorneys

February 21, 2020Posts

When an attorney is hired on retainer, they are supposed to put the money paid by the client up front into a trust account—often an Interest on Lawyers Trusts Account (IOLTA) that pays interest on the funds into legal aid organizations such as the Texas Access to Justice Foundation. The attorneys may then pay themselves out of the account based on hours worked. But sometimes attorneys are unaware of just how careful they need to...

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When a DWI Threatens Your Professional License

February 20, 2020Posts

An increase in the number of citations for driving while intoxicated was a standard fare during the holiday season, wherever one lives—Texas included. It’s easy—all too easy—to get swept up in the festive spirit of holiday parties and make the unfortunate choice to get behind the wheel when one’s blood-alcohol content is above the legal limit. For non-commercial drivers, that limit is .08 percent—which generally equates to two or three drinks per hour. And, while...

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Don’t Miss that Board Response Deadline

February 19, 2020Posts

When a complaint is made against a professional’s license, it can be a natural form of response to “bury one’s head in the sand,” so to speak. This manifests in various avoidant behaviors, perhaps the most common of which is missing a response deadline set by the agency board to which a licensee is subject, out of an unwillingness to think about the whole thing. But this is a terrible mistake for a licensee to...

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