Preventing Ethical Disasters in the Practice of Medicine, United States, 2008-2016

Résumé 0

Researchers researched and analyzed 280 cases of serious wrongdoing in medicine involving three kinds of violations: improper prescribing of controlled substances (IPCS), sexual abuse of patients (SAP), and unnecessary invasive procedures (UIP). They focused on these three types of wrongdoing because each is traumatizing to patients, causing physical and emotional harm, financial loss, and sometimes death. They are often the cause of major disciplinary actions by medical boards. The methodological approach involved identifying potential cases of serious wrongdoing through systematic literature reviews of court records, medical boards reports, newspaper articles, and online materials for each case. Using a detailed codebook, researchers performed descriptive coding of the literature and used a criminal law framework to identify the salient individual and environmental factors that predicted motive, means, and opportunity (MMO) for each case. Within each of the three types of wrongdoing, they identified typologies of cases using qualitative analysis. Finally, researchers held a working group meeting with experts to reach a consensus on how findings can inform medical education, policies, and oversight practices to reduce the rates and the duration of serious wrongdoing.