Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Why Dont' Physicians Do What They Say They Ethically Ought to Do?

The Annals of Internal Medicine just published a major study that contrasted physicians' attitudes toward professional norms with their self reports of whether they acted in conformity with these norms. [Campbell EG, Regan S, Gruen RL et al. Professionalism in medicine: results of a national survey of physicians. Ann Intern Med 2007; 147: 795-802. Link here.]

In brief, the authors developed a survey which asked physicians whether they agreed with various professional norms organized according to the 2002 ABIM/ ACP/ ESIM Physician Charter. They also asked them about whether they acted in conformity with these principles in terms of their recent actions, or in responses to scenarios. Physicians surveyed were primary care practitioners (family medicine, general internal medicine, and pediatrics), cardiologists, anesthesiologists, and general surgeons. The overall response rate was 52%.

In general, large majorities of physicians agreed with the ethical norms. How often they reported acting in agreement with these norms varied. In particular, nearly all physicians reported treating patients honestly (less than 1% reported telling a patient's family member something untrue in the last 3 years, 3% reported withholding information from a patient or a family member.) However, although 96% agreed that "physicians should put the patient's welfare above the physician's financial interests," 24% would refer a patient to an imaging facility in which the physician was an investor, without revealing this conflict of interest.

Some commentators suggested that external pressures may prevent physicians living up to the standards they themselves have endorsed. For example, physicians interviewed in a Washington Post article suggested that the current emphasis on patient satisfaction may conflict with the physician's ethical obligation to avoid wasting resources when a patient demands an unnecessary but not clearly harmful test. The Congressional Quarterly reported quoted the CEO of the Federation of State Medical Boards saying that physicians "were penned in by the American the health care system, fighting giant bureaucracies while fearing legal action if they make a mistake."

However, there was not much more discussion of the sorts of external pressures that might push physicians to forsake their values. Yet readers of Health Care Renewal might be able to come up with more examples.

For example, consider the pressures on young medical school faculty, who are under tremendous pressure from their academic leaders to become "taxpayers," i.e., people who bring in more money from external funding sources than they consume (See this post, in which the Dean of a prominent medical school ranked such "taxpayers" above all other faculty.)

Since government and foundation research support is tight, this leads many faculty to seek research support from pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and device companies. Once they get such support, they may find it hard to turn down offers of consulting positions, speakers' honoraria, advisory board positions and the like from such companies. Spurning such positions may cost them their research support. And their academic superiors often set the example that it is fine to accept such payments. (See this post about the prevalence of such financial arrangements among medical school department chairs.) Under these circumstances, preaching to young faculty about conflicts of interest seems to be just adding insult to injury.

I am most reminded of an article about business ethics we discussed back in July. The theme was that business students understand ethical principles, and know what they ethically ought to do. The problem is that they have trouble actually doing it.

The new article by Campbell et al also suggests that physicians know what they ethically ought to do. They thus don't need new statements of ethical principles, or more instruction about what they ought to do.

Instead, physicians need to focus on the discrepancy between what they know they ought to do and what they actually do.

Some of these discrepancies no doubt arise from their own human failings.

But absent in most of the current discussion is the enormous pressures physicians feel, often from leaders of powerful organizations with strong (usually economic, sometimes political or ideological) vested interests that may conflict with the admirable values embodied in the Physician's Charter.

It's easy to say that individual physicians always ought to do the right thing, regardless of external pressure. Maybe the individual physicians who feel uncomfortable being pressured into doing the wrong thing might get better organized to resist this pressure.

It would be even more helpful if medical and health care leaders could actually support physicians who want to do the right thing. Given that many medical and health care leaders have vested interests that push them in opposite directions, they may not jump at this opportunity.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doctors cannot speak up for one simple reason. Professional destruction. Speak up and all the work that you have done and the years you have sacrificed to become a physician are ENDED. This witch trial burning at the proverbial stake has been going on ever since sham peer review achieved state and federal immunity. Doctors do try to speak out and this is what happens: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03299/234499.stm

There are a few organizations that help physicians survive after they do speak out:
http://www.peerreview.org/

Anechoic MY ASS!

SamEyeAm

Lee Green MD MPH said...

I must agree with the commentator above. It's effectively professional suicide to speak out when observing dangerous or substandard patient care. It's all well and good to argue in the abstract that we should speak up in the best interest of patients. It's another thing entirely when you know that your spouse and children may lose their home if you do.

When I was an intern, I completed a C-section while the attending stood there waving gently in the breeze, so drunk if I'd hit the Bovie he'd have burst into flames. Everyone at the community hospital where this took place knew he was an alcoholic, no one confronted it, and it was absolutely clear that if I reported it I (and not he) would be toast. Accomplishing what?

Doctors don't fail to report dangerous conditions because we're morally lax. We don't report them because sacrificing our careers for nothing is pointless. Military officers face the same problem. There is no more dangerous act than telling truth to power.

Anonymous said...

There is nothing more dangerous to your SOUL and spiritual health than hiding the truth for the sake of materialistic gain.