In which trek reviews Prescription for Trouble

Back in early December, I scored the Kindle edition of Code Blue,a medicolegal thriller, for free. I didn't start it right away. You know how it goes: something gets put into the TBR stack but the stack has morphed into an amorphous heap and you aren't quite sure what books arrived before other books...

Anyway, this week, Medical Errorwas listed free for Kindle, so I scooped it up. Then I noticed the author's name and thought, "Gee, haven't I previously read something of his?"

Well, no, no I hadn't. Code Blue jumped to the front of the TBR queue since I couldn't very well start book two of a series before I'd read book one.

Long time blog readers might remember that, in a previous career, I was a pharmacist. Yep, licensed and registered for over a decade. I really enjoyed the pharmacological aspects of my job back then. Figuring out the hows and whys of disorders and disease states and evaluating treatment modalities is a very cool thing. Based on my background, I was very interested to see what this author/physician had to say.

Code Blue is the story of how young Dr Cathy Sewell returns to her hometown in Texas to set up a general practice. She brings load of baggage with her, including mistrust of men due to two failed engagements and anger over her parents' deaths. She is also fearful that she will begin showing symptoms of schizophrenia, like her mother.

I became invested in the book from the very beginning. How can you not get hooked on a story where the protagonist is run off the road on the first page? The automotive near-miss is just the beginning of Cathy's troubles. Financial worries are constantly at the forefront for this student loan indebted young doctor. She also is carrying a bank note the size of a minor mortgage incurred from setting up her practice. Of course, if the hospital would hurry up granting her privileges, she might be able to better meet patient needs and attract more patients, which would aid in paying down some of that debt.

When one of Cathy's patients arrives in the emergency room in severe cardiac distress, her competency is questioned: why did she double then man's digitalis dosage? Cathy knows she didn't but a malpractice suit is brought against her.

Right about here is where I started to question the story. In the state where I was licensed and practiced, we were required to use tamper-resistant prescription pads. Was this not the case in Texas? Turns out, it is, at least for Medicaid patients.

Pursuant to federal law (H.R. 2206 / Public Law 110-28, U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007), effective April 1, 2008, prescribing practitioners are required to use tamper-resistant prescription paper when writing a prescription for any drug for Medicaid recipients."
-- HSSC Vendor Drug Program

Given the risks and penalties involved in writing drug orders on invalid prescription blanks, I found it kind of difficult to believe that doctors and hospitals would go to the trouble of ordering separate pads for Medicaid patients only. Easier to order the tamper-resistant blanks only and use them for all patients as advises:

"HHSC encourages prescribers to adopt the use of tamper-resistant paper for all their patients. It will reduce their over-all risk and will avoid the confusion of determining which pad to use for which patient."
-- HSSC Vendor Drug Program

Overall, it was a pretty interesting read, even if I did have doubts regarding the likelihood that events would play out as described. The writing style was comfortable and the plot moved along nicely. I do have to say that I knew "whodunnit" and why fairly early on in the book but the protagonist was blind-sided, so I guess that was okay.

After finishing Code Blue, I started Medical Error. This second book in the series does not have the same cast of characters and yet it is also set in Texas and centers on another young female doctor who is mistrustful of men and who is accused of writing bogus narcotics scripts. In this volume, too, the doctor is also accused of malfeasance and is also threatened with a malpractice suit. Again, I figured out the culprit before the end of the book.

Very similar stories. I'm rather glad that both of these books were free. Either one of them as a standalone story is pretty good but as two consecutive books in a series? Well, I would have preferred a bit more variety.