While watching an episode of House today, the topic of conflict of
interest came up. Dr. Cuddy, Dean of Medicine, was in the process of adopting a
baby. Upon meeting the mother of the baby, she discovers she has a medical
condition, so Dr. Cuddy admits her to the hospital. Once they determine what is
wrong with the mother, they have to make a dramatic decision: deliver the baby
prematurely and risk its health or wait for the baby to get closer to term and
risk the mother’s health. Because Dr. Cuddy was invested in the health of the
baby, her “medical” opinion was to monitor the mother but leave the baby for
now. This, however, posed serious risks to the life of the mother. The obvious
solution was to deliver the baby prematurely, as that was what the mother
wanted to do, and the ethically correct thing to do. This showed a real-world
example of conflict of interest, which I mentioned in a previous post.
In this case, it was inappropriate for Dr. Cuddy to be passing off her
advice as “medically” relevant. Because she had a personal stake in the
decision, she should have bowed out and allowed the rest of the doctors to make
the correct decision.
In recent years, this has become a larger problem amongst nurses and
doctors alike, often when meeting with pharmaceutical companies. One article
outlines two main issues: giving out free samples to patients that have limited
financial resources and attending conferences and lunches held by the companies
to promote their product. In the first situation, the nurse is conflicted
between helping patients and setting appointments with reps under false
pretenses to obtain the drugs. While the idea is to help patients, her actions
are unethical. She is taking free medication for the wrong reasons. In the
other case, a doctor goes to many different pharmaceutical presentations for free
lunches and enjoyable “breaks and training” from work. In both situations, the
person is acting with a conflict of interest; one to help the patient, one to
help himself. Either way, they are both acting unethically. Watching House made
me realize that conflicts of interest probably arise often in the healthcare industry,
just as this one did in the episode today.
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