YouTube is stuffed with videos like the one above, posted by Dr. Fick, aka Dr. Windell Boutte, a Georgia dermatologist who poses as a plastic surgeon and who has rafts of malpractice suits pending against her. Though she claims otherwise on her website, she is a board-certified dermatologist, but not certified as a plastic surgeon or general surgeon.
However, in the Peach Tree State, every licensed physician is allowed to perform operations, even if they are not a board-certified. They are not supposed to be dancing while they do, however. Well, this is implicit. Apparently it isn’t made clear enough, at least for this doctor. Boutte posts videos of herself dancing during surgery, like the one above. There are many more.
Thus she is a fick, the first medical variety I have encountered. A fick is someone who is openly, shamelessly, even gleefully unethical. The fact that this hyper-narcissist films herself doing choreography and mugging for the camera while the only thing on her mind should be her patient’s care demonstrates that she is wildly unethical, reckless, irresponsible and unprofessional, and this would be the case if her record for safety was squeaky clean. It isn’t. At least seven malpractice lawsuits against Boutte include claims that she used unqualified staff during procedures that left former patients disfigured. Two additional lawsuit settlements are listed on the state licensing website. And then there is the dancing around unconscious, exposed, patients while performing renditions of popular songs, such as “Bad and Boujee,” “Building up Fat in the Booty” and “Gut Don’t Live Here Anymore, while her staff act like the back-up singers.
(I can’t believe I’m writing this.)
“For a surgeon to be singing while she is cutting into a patient is very unprofessional and dangerous,” said Dr. Marisa Lawrence, a real board-certified plastic surgeon and the former chief of plastic surgery at Northside Hospital. “It’s an operating theater, not an acting theater. It really is inappropriate to behave in such a manner.”
Ya think? Did we really need an expert to explain that?
And, incredibly, Dr. Fick is still taking patients, still operating, and still dancing. The Georgia Medical Board has had complaints against Boutte for at least two years, and those videos are on the web for anyone to see. Just one should have been sufficient for her practice to be shut down. Such videos are res ipsa loquitur: their very existence proves that this doctor is a menace.
I don’t understand how a medical board can be so slovenly and careless about the lives of citizens. I don’t understand how any doctor could think that behaving like Boutte does is anything but dangerous and reckless. I don’t understand how it took this long for her idiotic showboating to be exposed. I don’t understand how anyone who saw those videos would entrust their surgery to such a fool. I don’t understand how any patient who suffered harm at Boutte’s hands would be shocked–shocked!—that a doctor who operated while doing hip-hop moves might prove untrustworthy.
I don’t understand any of it.
Ethics Alarms 
I think the scarier thought is that there are probably people who want to have this doctor to perform surgery on them because of the videos. And I would break that down further to suggest there are those who think it would be neat to have such a doctor, and those who think they could star as the patient in the next YouTube phenomenon.
I think there must be people like this because I doubt these videos would exist without a following. Moreover, unless Dr. Boutte is completely senseless, she would not have posted them unless she thought she could attract people to her business with them.
I’m trying to figure out how to phrase my next thought, and maybe someone can help me out, but it seems there’s a growing preference in our society for personality over substance. Who cares if she botches some procedures when she’s just so cool? Who cares about results when the so-called professional is so groovy? And why would you ever want some serious, stodgy, unpersonable fellow to operate on you in the first place?
You know… It’s generally not good optics to blame victims for their plights… But if someone sought out Dr. Fick Booty *because* of those videos, and they got seriously hurt, it would be a tragic but clear example of Darwinism.
Yyyyyeah. I nearly wrote that.
It’s OK, I’m an ass. What I was really debating on was “Dr. Fick Booty” or “Dr Booty Fick”, one way or the other, that name is a perfect butt to the joke.
I just really hope I can get this shit out of my system.
Ok, I think it’s all…. behind… me… Dammit.
The *ends* justify the means
“Who cares if she botches some procedures when she’s just so cool?”
Friendliness and personality and ability to form relationships are business values, but they shouldn’t be overriding values to quality of the product.
I like your mention of the word “cool”. I’ve noticed, since the rise of juvenile culture since the 40s, as America’s material success has allowed youth and young adults to forestall work longer than has been historically typical, that “cool” has become a virtue that trumps “good”.
It no longer goes to say “do this action, because it is good” or “do behave like this because it is bad”…now, we exhort our youth to “be cool man” or “hey, that’s not cool” or it’s corollary when you are trying to enforce standards on someone, “you mad, bro?”.
The problem is that “cool” and “good” only tenuously overlap, and in many instances, do not overlap at all, and our youth receive an endorsement of an uncomfortable amount of unhealthy, or dangerous, or anti-social behavior because “it’s cool” and we all want to be “cool”.
“Be good” is prudish and old fogey and sometimes causes “cool” behavior to be verboten.
“It no longer goes to say “do this action, because it is good” or “do behave like this because it is bad””
ARG.
I missed a “not” in there. It should say:
It no longer goes to say “do this action, because it is good” or “do not behave like this because it is bad”
I wonder if patients can specify what songs the good doctor dances to while in their surgery?
Can they help with the choreography? Ask for a dress rehearsal to be sure the camera angles are right?
Hold on. I see them do this all the time on the various Doctor TV shows. You tellin me that ain’t real?
What jumped out most to me was that she touched her face with her gloved hand.
One of my college jobs involved handling nasty chemicals. It was a great training exercise in proper glove protocol. 5 minutes after you messed up, you knew you messed up because you headed to spend 15 minutes running water over whatever was bright red and smarting.
Now whenever I see shows like crime scene or medical shows, those improper use of glove protocol sticks out to me glaringly.
What’s the proper pronunciation of this woman’s last name? Booty? Bootay? Ugh.
I had a close friend in college with that name. His family pronounced it “Boo-tay”.
(His family was cajun, so the pronunciation was ultimately French derived)
Makes sense. I wonder whether the name was a branding decision. I’m going to guess she specializes in butt implants? If it’s her surname, rather than a husbands’s, she must be an octoroon from Louisiana/Cajun country.
I don’t think octoroon is a useful term in regular modern discussions. It was a legal term used to deny individuals their rights as Americans.
But yes, she could have a diverse ancestry, but also, did not some of the slaves in the 1800s adopt the surnames of their “owners”?
True but I also think in New Orleans society, octoroons (and quadroons, etc.) were also highly prized for their beauty and I think some rose to very high levels of society and not just as kept women. I need to do some more research on them.
I think of the term when I see Beyonce, who has a Creole mother I believe. I’ve always thought it ironic that we’re told black is beautiful, but everything we see in show business and the movies says, ahem, yes, black is beautiful, but not too black is much, much more beautifuller. Which is a problem that no one ever mentions. For every Imam, there are dozens of Meghan Markles, Beyonces, Mariah Careys and Halle Barrys,
Wait, a person who does both surgery and musical performances? A dispute over whether a villain’s surname is pronounced “booty” or “bootay”? This story is clearly an incredibly oblique reference to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension.
That aside, I’m surprised to see someone attempting to straddle the line between physician and surgeon so cavalierly. I thought medical professionals took the line between different areas of expertise more seriously than that these days, now that we have so many specializations.