Physician Misconduct Research Articles

Study the Types of Medical Crimes and Medical Infractions in the Penal Code of Afghanistan

Doctors are regarded as lifesavers in the world. Earlier, people who practiced medicine used to be precise in their treatment and more concerned with curing patients, it was considered as a service to humanity. However, currently, the profession has evolved into a money-making enterprise rather than a noble work. This has devolved into misuse of a noble deed. One of the ways to make money is medical crimes and medical infractions. So one of the most important issues discussed in today's law is the Medical Crimes and Medical Infractions. All countries have complete laws on prosecuting delinquent doctors. Afghanistan's legal system has incomplete laws regarding medical crimes and infractions. Unfortunately, no research has been done in this field in Afghan law. This is the first research that discusses medical crimes and medical infractions in the Afghan penal code. The penal code of Afghanistan is incompletely criminalized medical crimes and has not criminalized medical infractions. Therefore, it is necessary that the Afghan penal code should criminalize and recognize the medical infractions. This research wants to provide a legal solution to compensate the physical damage and mental damage of the patient, explaining the difference between medical infractions and medical crimes, study the challenges of the Afghan penal code regarding the criminalization of medical infractions cases and providing a suitable solution to prevent medical infractions and crimes in the Afghan society. Overall, there is a need for a fair and effective method to monitor and punish physician misconduct that will be conductive to the honest delivery of quality health care.

Phenotyping as disciplinary practice: data infrastructure and the interprofessional conflict over drug use in California.

The narrative of the digital phenotype as a transformative vector in healthcare is nearly identical to the concept of "data drivenness" in other fields such as law enforcement. We examine the role of a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) in California-a computerized law enforcement surveillance program enabled by a landmark Supreme Court case that upheld "broad police powers"-in the interprofessional conflict between physicians and law enforcement over the jurisdiction of drug use. We bring together interview passages, clinical artifacts, and academic and gray literature to investigate the power relations between police, physicians, and patients to show that prescribing data appear to the physician as evidence of problematic patient behavior by the patients, and to law enforcement as evidence of physician misconduct. In turn, physicians have adopted a disciplinary approach to patients, using quasi-legalistic documents to litigate patient behavior. We conclude that police powers have been used to pave data infrastructure through a contested jurisdiction, and law enforcement have used that infrastructure to enroll physicians into the work of disciplining patients.

The Characteristics of Physicians Who are Re-Disciplined by Medical Boards: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Physician misconduct adversely affects patient safety and is therefore of societal importance. Little work has specifically examined re-disciplined physicians. A study was conducted to compare the characteristics of re-disciplined to first-time disciplined physicians. A retrospective review of Canadian physicians disciplined by medical boards between 2000 and 2015 was conducted. Physicians were divided into those disciplined once and those disciplined more than once. Differences in demographics, transgressions, and penalties were evaluated. There were 938 disciplinary events for 810 disciplined physicians with 1 in 8 (n = 101, 12.5%) being re-disciplined. Re-disciplined physicians had up to six disciplinary events in the study period and 4 (4.0%) had events in more than one jurisdiction. Among those re-disciplined, 94 (93.1%) were male, 34 (33.7%) were international medical graduates, and 88 (87.1%) practiced family medicine (n = 59, 58.4%), psychiatry (n = 11, 10.9%), surgery (n = 9, 8.9%), or obstetrics/gynecology (n = 9, 8.9%). The proportion of obstetrician/gynecologists was higher among re-disciplined physicians (8.9% vs. 4.2%, p = 0.048). Re-disciplined physicians had more mental illness (1.7% vs. 0.1%, p = 0.01), unlicensed activity (19.2% vs. 7.2%, p <0.01), and less sexual misconduct (20.1% vs. 27.9%, p = 0.02). License suspension occurred more frequently among those re-disciplined (56.8% vs. 48.0%, p = 0.02) as did license restriction (38.4% vs. 26.7%, p <0.01). License revocation was not different between cohorts (10.9% vs. 13.5%, p = 0.36). Re-discipline is not uncommon and underscores the need for better identification of at-risk individuals and optimization of remediation and penalties. The distribution of transgression argues for a national disciplinary database that could improve communication between jurisdictional medical boards.

Characteristics of Internal Medicine Physicians Disciplined by Professional Colleges in Canada.

Physician misconduct is of serious concern to patient safety and quality of care. Currently, there are limited data on disciplinary proceedings involving internal medicine (IM) physicians.The aim of this study was to investigate the number and nature of disciplinary cases among IM physicians compared with those of other disciplined physicians.Our retrospective study reviewed information from all provincial Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons (CPS) and compiled a database of all disciplined physicians from 2000 to 2013 in Canada. Disciplinary rate differences (RDs) were calculated for IM physicians and compared with other physicians.From 2000 to 2013, overall disciplinary rates were low (9.6 cases per 10,000 physician years). There were 899 disciplinary cases, 49 of which involved 45 different IM physicians. IM physicians comprised 10.8% of all disciplined physicians and were disciplined at a lower rate than non-IM physicians, incurring 5.18 fewer cases per 10,000 physician years than other physicians (95% confidence interval [CI] 3.62–6.73; P < 0.001). They were significantly less likely to be disciplined for: unprofessional conduct (RD 1.16; CI 0.45–1.87; P = 0.001); unlicensed activity (RD 0.78; CI 0.37–1.19; P < 0.001); standard of care issues (RD 1.37; CI 0.49–2.26; P = 0.002); sexual misconduct (RD 1.65; CI 0.90–2.40; P < 0.001); miscellaneous (RD 0.80; CI 0.11–1.50; P = 0.020); mental illness (RD 0.06; CI 0.01–0.12; P = 0.025); inappropriate prescribing (RD 0.74; CI 0.15–1.33; P = 0.010); and criminal conviction (RD 0.33; CI 0.00–0.65; P = 0.048). No significant differences were found with respect to unclear violations, fraudulent behavior/prevarication, or offenses involving drugs/alcohol (all RDs less than 0.32). IM physicians were also less likely to incur the following penalties: voluntary license surrender (RD 0.53; CI 0.37–0.69; P < 0.001); suspension (RD 2.39; CI 1.26–3.51; P < 0.001); retraining/assessment (RD 1.58; CI 0.77–2.39; P < 0.001); restriction (RD 1.60; CI 0.74–2.46; P < 0.001); other (RD 0.52; CI 0.07–0.97; P = 0.030); formal reprimand (RD 2.78; CI 1.77–3.79; P < 0.001); or fine (RD 3.28; CI 1.89–4.67; P < 0.001). No significant differences were found with respect to revocation or mandated counseling/rehabilitation (all RDs less than 0.46).Generally, disciplinary rates among physicians were low. Compared with other physicians, IM physicians have significantly lower disciplinary rates overall and are less likely to incur the majority of disciplinary offenses and penalties.

Spanning a Decade of Physician Boundary Violations: Are We Improving?

Sexual boundary violations can negatively impact the culture of safety within a medical practice or healthcare institution and severely compromise the covenant of care and physician objectivity. Lack of education and training is one factor associated with physician misconduct that leads to high financial and personal cost. This paper presents a follow-up study of physicians referred to a professional development course in 2001 and presents demographic data from 2001 to present. The paper focuses on the education and remediation progress regarding sexual misconduct by physicians.

Social Media and Physicians’ Online Identity Crisis

Recognizing this challenge and given reports of physician misconduct online, institutions, medical boards, and physician organizations worldwide have promulgated recommendations for physician use of social media. A common theme among these recommendations—with a recent example from the American College of Physicians and Federation of State Medical Boards4—is that physicians should manage patient-physician boundaries online by separating their professional and personal identities. In this Viewpoint, we contend that this is operationally impossible, lacking in agreement among active physician social media users, inconsistent with the concept of professional identity, and potentially harmful to physicians and patients. A simpler approach that avoids these pitfalls asks physicians not whether potential social media content is personal or professional but whether it is appropriate for a public space.

Chapitre 3. The present state and problems of “the Code of medical ethics” in Japan

A code of professional ethics for the physician in Japan is being prepared caused by the progress of the medical conditions. The Japan Medical Association (JMA) enacted "the guideline on professional ethics for the physician" in 2004. However, as for the substantial effect of this guideline, it may not be able to be expected. The present state of the professional group of the physician in Japan can be shown as that reason. (1) First, there is not any physician's group of the compulsory admission, but only professional ability profit group of the voluntary admission in Japan. (2) There are not ethical regulations of the profession which has legal effect to face in the physician's misconduct in Japan. (3) In addition, there is not any autonomous organizations inside the professional group which examine and impose disciplinary punishment to the physician who went through misconduct in Japan. After all, the ethics in the physician would be left to each physician's conscience. Then, how should we do to solve such various fundamental problems? In this paper, the situation in various foreign countries is surveyed as an indication of the Japanese medical profession's future conduct. Moreover, I present some solutions to the various problems in fulfilling the professional ethics for the physician in Japan.

Peer Reporting of Suspected Physician Misconduct

Physicians are ethically required to investigate the actions of problematic colleagues, even if the entire practice will come under scrutiny. Virtual Mentor is a monthly bioethics journal published by the American Medical Association.

False Allegations of Pregnancy Resulting From Incestuous Rape and Physician Misconduct: Proof Positive

BackgroundThe veracity of adult allegations of remote childhood sexual abuse have been the focus of intense debate fuelled by the controversy over both repressed and false memory syndromes. Likewise, increased awareness of physician misconduct in recent years has mandated numerous policy statements and task force guidelines to protect patients. CaseA 23-year-old woman alleged that she had suffered incestuous rape at age 12 years, resulting in pregnancy. She named a physician who she claimed had performed an illegal pregnancy termination. Subsequent evaluations revealed that she had uterovaginal agenesis. ConclusionNeither sexual abuse nor physician misconduct should be tolerated, and all such allegations deserve thorough and expeditious investigation. However, we must remain cognizant that any such allegation may be false and have devastating consequences for the unjustly accused.

Physician misconduct in New York State: Professional solidarity versus the public interest

(1979). Physician misconduct in New York State: Professional solidarity versus the public interest. Journal of Legal Medicine: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 186-216.

Occupational Licensing and the Public Interest

Occupational licensing has been justifiable in the view of legislatures on the grounds that it protects the public interest; often, however, it is the producers of the good or service who present this argument to the state legislatures. This is hardly surprising, since the typical consumer is likely to suffer too small a wealth loss (in the form of higher prices) in the licensing of one more occupation, as has already been pointed out by others (Friedman 1962, p. 143). The end result is the promotion of the interests of the producer group rather than those of the public. Though this is what we economists would expect to happen, the principal difficulty in making progress with our case has been in trying to convince legislatures that the occupations receiving licenses do use their power to promote their own wealth at the expense of the consumer. It is the purpose of this paper to present evidence on this point in order that the ground rules for discussing the problem with state legislators can be altered. It will first be necessary to present the theoretical apparatus with which I will inspect and evaluate the data. It should be noted at the outset that some of the ingredients of my model were mentioned in one very interesting earlier study of the purpose of licensing. In particular, Moore (1961, p. 112) expressed the proposition that "the more demand is growing for the occupation, the greater the return from licensing." Moore concluded that the evidence indicated the tendency to license was not correlated with its monetary return (1961, p. 113). I have formulated the hypothesis somewhat more precisely and have used appendix data from the same study utilized by Moore but which appendix data he neglected to analyze (Council of State Governments 1952, p. 92); my investigation tends to support the same basic hypothesis which his investigation failed to support.