DELWARE COUNTY, OHIO: Ohio has banned Dr Katharine Roxanne Grawe, popularly known as 'Dr Roxy' on TikTok, from practicing medicine ever again after she was accused of harming patients while livestreaming several operations on the video sharing platform.
On Wednesday, July 12, the State Medical Board of Ohio decided to permanently revoke Grawe's medical license. The board said that while the surgeries were being performed, Grawe, whose license had been suspended since November 18, 2022, disregarded her patients' safety by livestreaming portions of their procedures, speaking into a camera and responding to queries from viewers.
'This case isn't about some antiquated view of social media'
While requesting that Grawe's license be revoked, an attorney representing the state's case against the doctor stated, "This case isn't about some antiquated view of social media. These patients trusted Dr Roxy because of what they saw on social media. She made major surgeries with potentially life-altering complications seem like one big party," as per The Columbus Dispatch.
Grawe reportedly pled with the board to evaluate the charges against her with an open mind. She said that the the punishment she had received was far harsher than she had anticipated. She bemoaned how the accusations had affected her personal life, claiming her children had been beaten up at school and her husband had left her.
Grawe said that she tried to tear down the "stiff and scary wall between patients and practitioners" via social media. She claimed that she now realized she fell short of the standards set by the medical board. Grawe told the board, "As I stand here today, I see how many of those silly videos seemed unprofessional, I understand how my actions at times seemed careless and offended my patients and colleagues."
The medical board's vice-president, Jonathan B Feibel, criticized Grawe for her "recklessness" and for ignoring the board's regulations. According to the suspension letter posted online, the secretary of the medical board had warned Grawe at least twice in the past four years about the need to protect patient privacy while posting images or videos on social media. The secretary advised her to take remedial education courses on plastic surgery complications, professionalism and ethics in September 2021. She was required to provide completion certificates for the courses and explain what she had learned and how she planned to use it in her future practice.
The board said that Grawe continued to record and broadcast live procedures after finishing the courses up to or around October 14. Despite the warnings, Feibel said Grawe disregarded any complaints. claiming they were from angry former patients.
Feibel said, "It's not appropriate to put patients in danger for the social media world. Dr. Grawe's social media persona was more important to her than the lives of the patients she treated."
'I feel good, but I also feel bad'
Mary Jenkins, who had sued Grawe in 2016 for a failed breast reconstruction procedure and won, was present at the hearing. Following her breast cancer diagnosis in 2006, Jenkins had her right breast removed but she postponed getting reconstruction surgery until she met Grawe in 2012. For the procedure, Grawe took an abdominal flap to create a right breast during the surgery at Mount Carmel St. Ann's. However, two days later, Grawe had to remove the flap as it died from blood clots. Jenkins' chest was left with "a gaping hole that required extensive wound therapy," according to a pre-trial declaration submitted by her lawyer, David Shroer. While the wound healed, she stayed in a nursing home for four months.
Jenkins filed a complaint against Grawe stating that her her attempts to treat the complications, by employing leech therapy rather than surger, "were professionally negligent and fell well below accepted standards of medical care." Jenkins was awarded $358,000 by a jury for the flawed operation.
After Grawe's license was revoked, Jenkins said, "I don't know what to call this feeling. I feel good, but I also feel bad, Finally I have closure after 11 years of enduring and remembering all that I went through."
According to a notification from the medical board sent when her license was revoked, Grawe perforated the bowel of an unnamed patient during a liposuction, a Brazilian butt lift and a Grawe skin tightening procedure, necessitating emergency care a week following surgery. The procedure resulted in the patient developing a condition known as hepatic encephalopathy, which is the "loss of brain function when a damaged liver does not remove toxins from the blood."
