A physician filed a lawsuit claiming she was fired from the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine because of a whistleblower complaint against her previous hospital employer, Medscape reported June 26.
Brenda Gowesky, MD filed whistleblower complaints against Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center and its parent company, Brewer, Maine-based Northern Light Health. The complaints expressed concerns of an unsafe emergency department layout, including "remotely located and poorly monitored exam rooms" for psychiatric patients that led to at least one "avoidable" suicide. After making the reports, she said she experienced workplace harassment and hostility before being fired in May 2017.
According to court records, Northern Light Health later said it did not want her to be involved in any of the board's investigations because it had "lost confidence in Gowesky's ability to be fair, objective and unbiased" due to her outstanding whistleblower complaint. Dr. Gowesky said in the lawsuit that she had received positive feedback from medical board leadership until the request from Northern Light Health.
Dr. Gowesky alleged the medical board director, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit, became highly critical of her work and began giving negative performance evaluations before firing her a month later for "not being a team player," according to the suit. The civil rights lawsuit, filed June 2, claims she was unlawfully terminated as medical director after being given four workdays to address job performance concerns. She seeks compensatory and punitive damages, payment of lost wages and benefits and a jury trial.