Unfortunately, healthcare has a “dark side” that seems to have strongly emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a healthcare ethics speaker, author and ethics consultant, it is disappointing for me to see so many ethical healthcare issues arising in an industry that should have a high reputation for ethical behavior, and set the standard for ethical adherence. Healthcare ethics seems to have taken a step back.
Less than a year ago, the Gallup Organization conducted a nationwide poll entitled “American Confidence in Major U.S. Institutions Dips,” and of the many industries and institutions surveyed, confidence in healthcare and the medical system dropped from 51 percent in 2020 to 44 percent in 2021.
As a healthcare ethics speaker, I was compelled to study the reasons for this drop. While it is true that surveys show about half of all Americans lost faith in the FDA and CDC during the pandemic, the issues run a lot deeper and I believe healthcare ethics is at the core of the problems.
In May 2021, the prestigious Harvard School of Public Health completed an important study. Some of the points summarized included this finding:
“The public currently trusts nurses, healthcare workers, and doctors more than public health institutions and agencies.” Why this loss of trust?
Among the top reasons found were upward spiraling healthcare costs, reducing painkiller abuse and addiction, reducing illegal drug addictions, healthcare inequities and clearly patient abuse of the poor.
A direct link to unethical behaviors
As a healthcare ethics author, keynote speaker and consultant, some of ethical issues in healthcare can be directly be linked to a loss in confidence and mistrust. Virtually every day the following issues cross my desk: rampant Medicare fraud, pharmaceutical price gouging, hospital and clinic overbilling, painkiller and opioid scams, nursing home abuse of the elderly and poor and unnecessary procedures or procedures performed by unqualified “providers.”
Obviously, the above unethical healthcare issues I have raised don’t include illegal scams such as the “cottage industry” that arose in issuing phony vaccination cards, fraudulent cures and other quackery.
Nevertheless, the link between the survey findings and the unethical practices is unmistakable. Virtually every time I deliver a keynote talk on healthcare ethics, audience members talk to me in-person or a separate on-line chat about how to deal suspected cases of poor or even illegal behaviors of co-workers. I shake my head at the frequency of these comments as I know that so many healthcare providers want to do the right thing. All it takes is one “unethical apple” to ruin the entire effort.
It is not surprising that perceptions of unethical behaviors in the healthcare industry too often extend beyond “public health institutions and agencies,” to embrace hospitals, clinics, treatment centers and nursing home facilities.
Unethical healthcare behaviors, if allowed to go unchecked, will only intensify the lack of trust and contention between providers and patients. Once the erosion of trust begins, it is difficult, if not impossible, to renew the confidence that should be in place.
The solution
No matter the particular ethical issues in your aspect of healthcare, the solution to preventing unethical issues is continuous and reinforced ethical training. As an ethics consultant and speaker, my observation over many years is that those institutions and facilities that offer ethical healthcare training create an increased ethical atmosphere of trust and commitment between patient and provider.
While it is clear that in some cases patient trust in ethics has taken a step back, it can be restored, as a healthcare ethics consultant, I know that if the healthcare issues I mentioned are fully addressed, the staff and patient outcomes can be remarkable. Understand that there is an ethical bond that must go in both directions. “Trust” is key to the interaction between provider and patient. Both sides of the equation must be met for healing to be met.
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