Recently, I wrote a post on plagiarism in medicine. I advocate a stringent code of ethics for our profession. Once our integrity becomes squishy, then the whole tapestry starts to unravel. We physicians are charged to search for and guard the truth. In 1910, Sir William Osler wrote: No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. Of course, we physicians don’t always succeed in enlightening the truth, but we try. Every day, every one of us faces choices that test us. Some are easy. Most of us would not falsify billing submissions. Other choices are murkier. For example, do we coax a symptom out of a patient so that the procedure or visit becomes a covered benefit? Have we informed a patient whom we are recommending a colonoscopy about the radiologic alternatives? When a patient informs us that his primary care physician has referred hi
MD Whistleblower presents vignettes and commentaries on the medical profession. We peek 'behind the medical curtain' and deliver candor and controversy in every post.