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Create and enforce policies to deal with disruptive physicians

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, September 22, 2006

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The ideal is that a physician will behave professionally at all times despite pressures they encounter. To make sure they do, your institution can either embed its behavioral expectations in a comprehensive set of physician performance expectations or adopt a specific physician behavior policy. The best way to cultivate physician buy-in to behavioral expectations is to involve them in the process of defining those expectations. The following are examples of appropriate language for your policy:

• All physicians will consistently act in a professional and appropriate manner, including during times of disagreement
• When a physician feels concern regarding quality of care involving a hospital staff member's performance, the physician will address the concern in an appropriate and professional manner, either with the staff member or his or her supervisor
• Physicians shall refrain from behavior that generates complaints from fellow members of the medical staff, the hospital staff, patients, and patients' families

Regardless of which approach your medical staff takes, it is critical that the expectations or policy be shared with all medical staff members and that their ideas be seriously considered by the task force.

Editor's note: The above excerpt is from the online course, "Disruptive Physician Behavior: Techniques for Managing and Preventing." For more information on this and other courses in our library, go to http://www.hcprofessor.com/.

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