What if a doctor wanted to speak up to promote better patient care?
It can be difficult under the new Joint Commission guidelines, which casts a wide definition of what a “disruptive physician” means, giving examples like “reluctance or refusal to answer questions, return phone calls or pages; condescending language or voice intonation; and impatience with questions.”
Like any profession, some doctors are indeed jerks. But Doug Farrago wonders if they’ve gone too far, and have intimidated some doctors against blowing the whistle when they observe events adverse to patient care.
