This is in reference to your article “Former ER director stripped of privileges,” (Examiner, Nov. 21).

Whidbey Island Public Hospital District hired Dr. Mark Borden to be the director of the emergency department.

The hospital obviously felt Dr. Borden to be a highly qualified and competent doctor specializing in emergency care or the hospital would not have hired him.

He served in that position for about five years, during which time he provided the highest quality of medical care. He resigned from the hospital about a year and a half ago and has since gone on to find employment elsewhere and continued on with his life.

That should have been the end of the story.

Employer/employee relationship problems have existed since the beginning of employers and employees. This is simply another such relationship problem, nothing new.

What is new, however, and unheard of, is the fact that the hospital has decided to punish Dr. Borden a year and a half after he was no longer in their employ. Not only that, but to publicize it in the newspaper. Their obvious intention is to destroy this man’s ability to earn a livelihood, ruin his personal reputation, and to ostracize him from his community. One has to wonder why.

This transcends a business relationship and smacks of cruel personal vindictiveness.

Yes, there is a serious problem here, but it has nothing to do with Dr. Borden.

–Ann Campbell

Coupeville