Are laws needed to protect patients from sexual abuse?
This article by the Clarion Ledger does not read like what you would expect from a meeting story. The author did a good job finding the news in the Board of Licensure meeting. The author focused on the discussion of an article that was discussed in the meeting that had ranked Mississippi last in the nation when it came to protection of patients.
The author also did a good job of getting both sides of the opinions expressed at the meeting. One source discredited the article and believed that there were already laws in place, while another non-voting participant expressed concern about the consequences of not taking action.
The story also talked about other studies besides the one talked about in the meeting that showed Mississippi with higher “marks” in the area of patient protection. The author also found a source to explain why Mississippi did not rank high in taking away medical licenses from the physicians as punishment.
The reasonings led into more discussions of states like Mississippi and Alabama not wanting to lose more doctors. This seemed to show a desperation and need for doctors that some medical professionals and law makers put above the safety of patients.
I think that this article would have greatly benefitted from some type of visual. Graphs with statistics related to the topic would have helped the reader better understand the issue.
This whole article reads like a hard news story, because it is one. This article shows that stories on meetings do not have to be stuffy or boring. The author did not report on the meeting, in fact he barely mentioned it, he reported on the fact that the issue was brought up and then built a story around it.
Rachel Lambert 