Physician Health Programs and the Social Contract

Physician health is a special area of medical practice that raises critical ethical questions for practitioners and organizations. As diversion programs for impaired or disruptive physicians that allow limitation, suspension, or revocation of medical licensure to be diverted if they maintain safe practice, physician health programs (PHPs) can be administered by state medical societies, state medical licensing boards, or third parties. Decisions to refer, monitor, or reintegrate physicians into the profession must consequently balance those physicians' needs with patient safety and call on the ethics of the social contract in a way that may not be familiar to many physicians. An example of this lack of familiarity appeared in these pages recently In that article, PHP efforts to maintain physician adherence to treatment are characterized as coercive-"Failure to comply with any aspect of the [PHP] contract can, and often does, result in being reported to the licensing board." Moreover, the piece raised questions about whether physicians in PHP programs can even give "noncoerced, informed consent" to participate in research To characterize the pressures that keep physicians committed to PHP requirements and the efforts to study PHP practices as coercive does not recognize the ethical framework of the social contract, which is critical to this discussion

Business · Political science · Public relations · Social contract · Global Health Workforce Issues · Law · Medicine · Nursing · Primary Care and Health Outcomes

• The Cambridge Handbook of Substance and Behavioral Addictions

  Open Access•Steve Sussman•Cambridge Handbook of Substance…•2020

  Incluir item

• Burnout Among U.S. Medical Students, Residents, and Early Career Physicians Relative to the General U.S. Population

  Liselotte N Dyrbye, Colin P West et al.•Academic Medicine•2014

  Incluir item

• Burnout and Satisfaction With Work-Life Balance Among US Physicians Relative to the General US Population

  Tait D Shanafelt, Sonja Boone et al.•A.M.A. Archives of Internal…•2012

  Incluir item

• Deciding Whether To Refer a Colleague to a Physician Health Program

  Open Access•J Wesley Boyd•The AMA Journal of Ethic•2015

  Incluir item