Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:The Culture of Health Care
Unit:Ethics and Professionalism
Lecture:Ethical and legal standards
Slide content:Barriers to Disclosing Unethical Behavior Personal motivations Loyalty to the profession Institutional motivations Fear of negative publicity associated with a scandal Understandings about physician behavior Be confident and exercise independent judgment Do not raise concerns with others 16
Slide notes:Two other experts examined several well-known cases in which institutions refused to acknowledge ethical lapses by doctors or researchers, even after extensive investigations. The problems were exposed only when the facts of these cases were investigated by outside authorities. The conclusion from the study was that learned institutional values in medicine can create a culture in which its difficult to report the ethical gaps of others. The study identified three general types of barriers to disclosing unethical behavior: personal motivations, institutional motivations, and shared understandings of how physicians behave. 16