Forced to Speak with Social Worker

At least I still have my voice recorder with me. I turned it on and am going to request more than one person be present for this. The doctor suddenly appeared and said oh, they'd do the arsenic test but that I had to talk to this same woman with the attitude before I went anywhere.

Before he was saying they could measure abnormalities or indicators of arsenic in a normal liver measurement. Not a special test, just basic general chemistry and CBC which Virginia Mason did. But arsenic isn't tested this way.

So he's saying he'll do the test but it has to be sent out and yet if he's using blood, there isn't going to be anything in the blood. It passes through within 1-2 hours of ingestion.

From what I've read, the only reliable test is a hair sample.

This woman is telling me she has no problem with being tape recorded. But she looked like she did have a problem with it and then she said she had to ask the doctor and management about it.

I explained there are one-party consent states and two-party consent states and that this is a two-party consent state which only requires the two parties consent. I don't believe her place of work has any business telling her to not be recorded and if they do say so, it's suspect. Especially in the event a patient were detained, a legal matter could arise from the fact that a social worker or hospital attempted to prevent an accurate recording of a conversation. Conversations between doctor and patient are recorded all the time. I think it would be a legal issue should a patient be forced to speak with a social worker when they already declined (as in my case) and then were told the conversation could not be recorded.

I didn't voluntarily agree to this. I was told I either talk to her or I was going to be held against my will. That's what this doctor said. So in the event that a patient is threatened with detainment for not speaking to someone they have a right to refuse to speak to, it would be especially suspect that then the patient was refused the right to accurately document what is coming out of their mouth, which would or would not be be possible grounds for assessment and being detained.

They don't even have the bloodwork results back yet.

She came back and said I had to shut off my computer so nothing is recorded and that I had to shut off the voice recorder.