Opinion

Sachin H. Jain: Ethical erosion exists all around us

Photo from Sachin H. Jain/Linkedin

Oct 29, 2023, 03:39

Sachin H. Jain: Ethical erosion exists all around us

Sachin H. Jain, President and CEO of Scan Group and Health Plan, posted on LinkedIn:

“Ethical erosion is a term in the medical ethics literature that describes the loss of one’s professional values and grounding over time.

The Oxford Reference describes it as the following:

“An empirically observed phenomenon whereby medical students and doctors become less morally sensitive and ethically aware due to increasing cynicism, the negative effects of health-care training and practice, and the desire to ‘fit in’ with others in the profession.”

While the term originally applied to clinicians and trainees, I believe it has broader application in healthcare. It applies to anyone and everyone in the business of caring for others—and includes behaviors like:

-mesmerizing profits and other results with indifference to the human suffering that it might does
-indifference to complaints about reasonable expectations of service quality
-normalizing abnormal activities like overly aggressively denying claims and coverage
-putting necessary treatments and therapies (i.e. insulin) out of reach for people with co-pays
-imposing regulations to the exclusion of common sense and what is right

Sometimes awareness of a term or concept leads to greater awareness of the underlying issue.

Everyone who works in healthcare should commit the concept of ethical erosion to memory and monitor oneself for signs of it.

Ethical erosion exists all around us—every day—if you look for it.

And it will take all of us operating with greater consciousness of it to limit its nefarious effects. ”

Source: Sachin H. Jain/LinkedIn