Are West Texas nurses criminals or health advocates?
Remember the two West Texas nurses who were not only fired from their jobs but also indicted on third-degree felony charges for doing what they thought was right? To me, there appears to be so much wrong here — arrogance, vindictiveness, downright good-ol’-boy idiocy — that it’s hard to know where to begin. Last April, Vickilyn Galle and Anne Mitchell complained to the Texas Medical Board that Dr. Rolando Arafiles improperly encouraged patients in the hospital emergency department and in the rural health clinic to buy his own herbal “medicines.” The nurses, who practiced at Winkler County Memorial Hospital in Kermit, also thought it improper for him to attempt to take hospital supplies to perform a procedure at a patient’s home. (The hospital chief of staff stopped him.) Galle and Mitchell, both in their 50s and longtime members of the American Nurses Association/Texas Nurses Association, went up the chain of command at the 25-bed hospital and got nowhere with their complaints. So they
