Balancing the needs of doctors, patients, society

From the AJC’s Doctors & Sexual Abuse series, July 14. It is online at ajc.com/doctors:

“This is difficult, I’ll be honest with you,” Dr. Steven Stack, whose one-year term as the AMA’s president concluded last month, said in an interview.

“The AMA condemns sexual misconduct by physicians, period,” Stack said. “There is no exception for that.” Except: “We believe in redemption sometimes for people,” Stack said. “There are people who are, perhaps, serial offenders, and the medical boards need to remove them, and they need not to have the opportunity for further chances. Then there are other people for whom the circumstances make all the difference.”

Doctors, he said, “are humans like anybody else, and there are a lot of complexities in some of these cases.”

“We never want the victim to be victimized a second time,” said Stack, the association’s immediate past president. “On the other hand, we don’t want an innocent person to be victimized by someone who makes a false accusation.”

The American College of Surgeons, however, publishes information about every member it expels or suspends. Its website lists six surgeons punished since 2012 for sexual misconduct.

“Frankly, it’s a bit of a deterrent,” said Dr. Patricia Turner, the organization’s director of member services. “Surgeons know their names would be published if they broke the rules.”

Publicity is especially effective in sexual misconduct cases, she said. From the AJC, July 10: Leanne Diakov, general counsel for the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, said medical boards have to consider everything from the state’s need for physicians to the limits imposed by state law. In Kentucky, for example, doctors whose licenses are revoked by the medical board have a legal right to petition for reinstatement two years later.

“It’s always a balance,” Diakov said. “Obviously, the public looks at it and says, ‘Oh my gosh, how are they letting this physician practice.’ It’s a delicate balance between protecting public health resources, protecting patients and acting within the statutory authority that the legislature has given you.”