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.