With blistering resignation letter, prison doctor gives up $191,000 job
Why do you walk out on a $191,000 a year job? Because your life, the lives of your colleagues and the health of patients are at risk. That’s what a Georgia doctor said when giving up his job at Augusta State Medical Prison.
Dr. Timothy Young’s resignation letter adds new details to the security and maintenance problems at ASMP, which is both a closed security prison and a 55-bed hospital. He also writes about seeing inmates who were misdiagnosed or neglected in other Georgia Department of Corrections facilities. “The fights that we are required to wage in assuring the standard of care have become absurd,” he wrote.
Resignation letters can make a lasting impression — and that’s what Young intended — but he isn’t confident that needed changes will be made.
“What that place requires is beyond what the people there are capable of doing,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Read Dr. Young’s story and about a disturbing encounter he had with inmates and the dangers nurses faced in an exclusive story at myAJC.com.
About the Authors
Danny Robbins is a long-time investigative reporter who has worked for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Associated Press, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and other media outlets. He was part of the team at the AJC that was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in national reporting in 2017 for its investigation of sexually abusive doctors.
