Unethical behavior usually results in a loss of trust among the public. It has been said that as physical therapists start to assume a more autonomous role in healthcare, ethical judgments are going to play an increasingly important role in the gamut of clinical decision making.
The Federation’s Model Practice Act for Physical Therapy Fourth Edition recommends that physical therapy practice acts require physical therapists to adhere to the recognized standards of ethics of the physical therapy profession as established by rule.
You can view the APTA Code of Ethics and Guide for Professional Conduct by going to the APTA website, www.apta.org, and clicking on the following links: About APTA/Policies and Bylaws/ APTA Core Documents and Bylaws. Both documents are listed under “Core Documents.”
A Failure to Protect the Public
Jessica Santillan was a 17-year old girl from Mexico whose family reportedly paid a smuggler to bring her to the United States for a life-saving heart and lung transplant. The young woman died after organs with the wrong blood type were implanted by doctors at Duke University Medical Center. I kept wondering how something like that could happen at a prestigious hospital with some of the most highly skilled physicians in the country. It was also a hospital that trains doctors.
Crime Doesn't Pay
A license to engage in the practice of a regulated profession is a privilege available only to those who have met specific statutory standards. In North Carolina, the practice of physical therapy has been regulated since 1951. The Physical Therapy Practice Act specifies the qualifications that applicants for licensure must possess, and the Board spends a considerable amount of time reviewing applications for compliance with those requirements.
Developing a Code of Ethics in Ohio
Ethics codes establish an ideological framework with which all professionals in that profession can agree at some level. It is a framework for professionals to resolve ethical dilemmas, and it provides a distinctive language that gives a professional a unique sense of belonging.
Ethics as an Obligation
We have an obligation as regulators to make sure that the practitioners that we license are trusted by the people that they treat. Too often, the remediation that we choose to use is a band-aid for what we have perceived to be the problem when the problem is actually much larger and much more pervasive.
Ethical Decision Making to Avoid Disciplinary Action
This article discusses the issues involved in ethical decision making for healthcare providers and gives a model that can be used by healthcare providers in making tough decisions.
Examples of Remediation: When It Works and When it Doesn’t Work
Ethics remediation is a huge challenge. We know something was done wrong, but the ethical dimensions of the professional character reflected by that violation can be very subtle, very pervasive. It’s very hard to identify for a regulatory board. It would be relatively simple to discuss the statutes that individuals have violated. What we need to examine, though, are the underpinning of ethical judgment within any of these cases.
Ten Easy Ways to Lose Your License
This article discusses a presentation that the Massachusetts Board of Allied Health Professionals gives to licensees about the ten top reasons PTs and PTAs have been disciplined in that state.
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