BMJ  2007;335:1171 (8 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39420.528356.DB

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US doctors are not following ethical guidelines

Jeanne Lenzer

1 New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Many doctors in the United States are failing to conform to professional guidelines. A survey sponsored by the US Institute of Medicine found that doctors often fail to conform to accepted norms in areas of self regulation, managing conflicts of interest, and ordering of unnecessary tests.

Moreover, although most respondents thought they should report colleagues who were not competent, almost a half said that in the past three years they had known of a doctor who was "impaired or incompetent" but had failed to report the doctor to a relevant authority (Annals of Internal Medicine 2007;147:795-802).

The survey of 3167 randomly selected and eligible doctors, 1662 (52%) of whom responded, showed a substantial gap between what the doctors say they believe is appropriate professional behaviour and how they act.

The doctors were asked about their support of professional norms as established by the charter on professionalism promulgated in 2002 . . . [Full text of this article]


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