VA Chief of Surgery Charged with Murder in Death ofPatient

Dr. C. Douglas Wood, former chief of surgery at the Muskogee, Okla., veterans hospital, was charged with first-degree murder late Tuesday in the February 1994 death of Virgil Dykes.

Department of Veterans Affairs administrators have been aware of complaints about Wood’s care for years, but they nonetheless allowed him to stay on with reduced clinical privileges under an unusual agreement he made with the one-time chief of staff at the hospital. Wood, who is 60, has worked at the hospital since 1980.

In the years after the February 1994 death, the state of Minnesota – where Wood held a medical license – reprimanded and fined him $500 in what now appears to be Dykes’ case. Minnesota regulators said that as a “last resort” Wood gave an “inappropriate” potassium chloride injection to a patient whose lungs were filling with fluid.