Discuss and identify administrative harm in medicine.
Summarize the importance of medical professionalism as an antidote to unilateral administrative encroachment on patient care and teaching.
Impart the crucial nature of clinical-administrative teamwork in the governance and operations of hospitals and health systems.
Forecast the changing landscape of physician employment and health care organizational trends in the U.S.
Describe the rationale for physician unions and other mechanisms to foster patient-centered professionalism in health care.
In this afternoon course, learners will become familiar with the emerging concept of administrative harm.
Have you or your patients suffered from shortfalls in administrative support that have adversely affected your care? When you have inquired about the cause, have you been told, as if about an immutable force of nature like the weather, “It’s the supply chain” or “Everyone is having trouble hiring” or “It’s budget cuts” ?
Since the time of Hammurabi, clinicians have been held accountable for their decisions and actions that affect patients. Harm from clinical interventions has been much better delineated and significantly reduced in the two decades following the publication of To Err is Human. However, injuries to patients and to clinicians are increasingly arising from a newly described source, administrative harm.
Until recently, administrators in healthcare have played a supporting role. However, as the numbers and decision-making power of administrators in healthcare have burgeoned, the vulnerability of patients to the consequences of administratively-driven interventions or failures have likewise increased. Furthermore, occurring far from the exam table and hospital room, the invisibility and anonymity of administrators’ decisions is a systemic breach of the fundamentals of modern health care - teamwork, transparency and accountability.
This accredited course is offered by Massachussetts General Hospital. This course is targeted to Physicians, Specialty Physicians, Nurses, Nurse Practitioners and Physicians Assistants
Contact ceprograms@hms.harvard.edu with questions.
