Unprofessional conduct among top problem nationally.State medical licensing boards in all 50 states operate independently of each other, but all of them tackle a wide variety of problems--including ethical behavior issues--that crop up each year among physicians. While no specific national data is kept on the numbers and types of ethical complaints received, the second most frequent area of discipline seen from year to year is "unprofessional conduct," which would include ethical violations, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. data from the Federation of State Medical Boards Federation of State Medical Boards, n.pr an association comprising the medical boards of the United States, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and 13 state boards associated with osteopathic medicine. based in Dallas. The six most frequent areas of discipline are: * Substance abuse * Unprofessional conduct * Prescribing violations * Fraud * Negligence * Sexual misconduct sexual misconduct Professional ethics Any behavior that violates a health professional's ethics through sexual contact of physician and his/her Pt. See Professional boundaries. Both the Federation and the American Medical Association American Medical Association (AMA), professional physicians' organization (founded 1847). Its goals are to protect the interests of American physicians, advance public health, and support the growth of medical science. offer guidelines on how to deal with ethical behavior issues, but no one entity oversees or mandates how violations will be handled. State medical boards are bound by state statutes passed by their individual legislatures and the boards' powers vary widely, says Drew Carlson, director of communications Director of Communications is a position in the private and public sectors. The Director of Communications is responsible for managing and directing an organization's internal and external communications. for the Federation. Many ethical issues never make it to the state boards state boards Examinations administered by a US state board of medical examiners to license a physician in a particular state; these examinations play an ever-decreasing role in state medical licensure, as these bodies now rely on standardized national examinations , and are simply dealt with by individual health care organizations that create and approve their own ethical rules. Recently, for example, the Cleveland Clinic Cleveland Clinic (formally known as the Cleveland Clinic Foundation) is a multispecialty academic medical center located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Cleveland Clinic was established in 1921 by four physicians for the purpose of providing patient care, research, and medical Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio, announced plans to roll out new ethical rules to help eliminate the possibility of conflicts of interest arising among physicians and medical research corporations. According to an article in the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times, (1) "Cleveland Clinic is trying to avoid outright bans by asking researchers to disclose their ties and trying to minimize the effect of conflicts." 1996-2003--Reasons Physicians Were Disciplined Substance Abuse 825 Unprofessional Conduct 725 Controlled Substance Violations 625 Fraud 525 Negligence 425 Sexual Misconduct 325 Failure to Maintian Adequate Medical Records 225 Convicted of a Crime 125 Convicted of DWI/DUI 25 Source: Federation of State Medical Boards Note: Table made from bar graph. 1. Abelson, R and Pollack, A. "Patient Care vs. Corporate Connections." New York Times, Jan. 25, 2005. --Compiled by Bill Steiger, editor |
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