Dr. Jessica Anne Hetherington

This review is about Dr. Jessica A. Hetherington, an emergency physician at this hospital, and how she treated me during my visit. Her conduct is also the subject of a formal complaint I have filed against her with the Texas Medical Board. Everything here is my own firsthand experience and my honest opinion of how she handled me as a patient. She threatened me. While I was in the bed, Dr. Hetherington told me, word for word: "I'm gonna make sure you don't get care." A physician said that to a patient in her own emergency department. Not an explanation. Not a reason for any decision. A flat statement that she would see to it that I did not get care from this hospital. There is no version of that sentence that belongs in a hospital. A doctor controls whether a patient is taken seriously or pushed out the door, and Dr. Hetherington used that power as a threat against me instead of in my care. It is the reason I do not trust a single decision she made about me that day, and it is why her… name is now on a Texas Medical Board complaint instead of buried in a file no one would ever read. She was dismissive from the moment she walked in. I was not combative and I was not difficult. I came in needing help and was treated as an inconvenience to be processed and moved out as fast as possible. My read of it is that Dr. Hetherington had already decided how my visit would end before she did the work to support that decision, and then she shaped the record to fit the exit she wanted rather than the other way around. She rushed me out without taking the visit seriously. The entire job of an emergency physician is to treat a patient's concerns as real and rule out the dangerous possibilities before sending anyone home. In my experience she did the opposite. She minimized, she labeled, and she discharged. I left in worse shape than that visit should have allowed, carrying paperwork that framed me as the problem rather than the patient who came in for help. She left a record that does not match what happened in that room. A chart is supposed to justify the decisions a doctor makes. Hers reads like it was built to justify getting rid of me. That gap between what actually occurred and what was written down is a large part of why this went to the Texas Medical Board instead of becoming something I quietly let go. None of this was a misunderstanding or a clash of personalities. It was a choice about how to treat a human being who came to her for help, and she made that choice out loud, to my face. A patient should never walk out of an emergency room more afraid of the physician than of whatever brought them in. With Dr. Hetherington, that is exactly what happened to me. If you are considering Dr. Hetherington for your care, here is my honest advice as someone who sat in that room. Do not expect to be taken seriously, and do not expect the benefit of the doubt. Say plainly what you need and insist on it. Get a copy of your records before you leave the building, and read exactly what was written about you, because a physician who will say to a patient what she said to me is a physician who will write down whatever makes her own decision look justified. I have filed a formal complaint against Dr. Hetherington with the Texas Medical Board, and I am posting this so other patients walk in with their eyes open in a way I did not get to. If she will say that to one patient out loud, ask yourself what she quietly decides about the patients who are too overwhelmed, too frightened, or too alone to ever write it down afterward.