Session: Organizational Ethics and the Public Good
Watching the Watchers: How State Healthcare Disciplinary Boards Dehumanize Heathcare Workers
Saturday, September 21, 2024
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CT
Location: Grand Ballroom C (First Floor)
Abstract: Healthcare providers across all professions face significant challenges to delivering high-quality care (i.e., practicing during a global pandemic, staffing shortages, diminishing public respect, increasing workplace violence, limited healthcare and social resources, etc). Licensed healthcare providers practice their craft under the regulation of state boards. State healthcare licensing boards oversee, enforce norms of professionalism, and (ideally) remediate lapses among their practitioners. However, these boards exhibit significant variations and inconsistencies in how they attempt to accomplish these responsibilities, which lead to substantial, unseen burdens on healthcare providers.
This presentation delves into how unprofessional behavior is regulated by healthcare boards. Using mixed quantitative methods, including natural language processing, we created a novel database of publicly reported disciplinary actions taken by all Michigan healthcare boards to explore the nuances, trends, and patterns of professionalism regulation and discipline. Due to state data-reporting requirements and limited available resources, state-level trends, patterns, and comparisons of misconduct in each profession (e.g., sexual or drug-related misconduct) were not possible to study prior to this project.
This presentation will provide an overview of the data collection and processing, and demonstrate the inefficiencies, challenges, and unpredictability of disciplinary actions taken by the healthcare boards. Lack of transparency in the process adds to the overall burden borne by providers in all healthcare professions, further dehumanizing an already overtaxed workforce. Through careful, data-driven research, we conclude by offering some avenues of future research and collaborations, as well as some tentative recommendations for improving the process of disciplining and remediation professionalism among healthcare providers.
Learning Objectives:
After participating in this conference, attendees should be able to:
Understand the challenges faced by healthcare providers across various professions in delivering high-quality care amidst global pandemics, staffing shortages, workplace violence, and limited resources.
Explore the nuances, trends, and patterns of professionalism regulation and discipline at the state level, shedding light on previously unexplored aspects of misconduct within different healthcare professions.
Discuss potential avenues for future research and collaborations aimed at improving the process of disciplining and remediating professionalism among healthcare providers.
Tyler Gibb, JD, PHD – Associate Professor, Medical Ethics, Humanities & Law, Western Michigan University School of Medicine
