In an article written for the March 2015 Physician Health News, the official newsletter of the Federation of State Physician Health Programs (FSPHP) Doris Gunderson reviews the history of the organization in honor of its 25th anniversary. She writes:
“In 1990 the FSPHP was born out of a need for individual state programs to work together in discussing and promoting best practices and especially to influence national public policy.”1
For the last quarter century the FSPHP has pushed a plethora of both practice and policy (legal, regulatory and healthcare) that claims to assist state physician health programs in identifying, managing and monitoring impaired physicians and protect the public from harm.
It is time we examined both the authority and the knowledge claims on which they are based. Kathryn Pyne Addelson said: “It is the unexamined exercise of cognitive authority within our present social arrangements that is most to be feared. Illegitimate politicization and rampant irrationality find their most fruitful soil when our activities are mystified and protected from criticism.” This is applicable here. The FSPHP has been an unopposed and unexamined authority for the past quarter-century and, as the recent articles published on Medscape and in the BMJ are revealing -they are also irrational and illegitimate authority. When confronted with direct and precise questions concerning misconduct and abuse they are incapable of responding with direct and precise answers. Moreover, the misconduct is not subtle and artful but blatant and crude. This is a system of oppressions, injustices and illusions. We call upon all those of good will in both the medical profession and the public at large to join us in this confrontation with illegitimate, irrational and immoral authority.
Disrupted Physician 
[…] how moral entrepreneurship, moral panics, moral crusades and “bent-science” formed public policy and regulation in the medical […]
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Disrupted Physician and commented:
In an article written for the March 2015 Physician Health News, the official newsletter of the Federation of State Physician Health Programs (FSPHP) Doris Gunderson reviews the history of the organization in honor of its 25th anniversary. She writes:
“In 1990 the FSPHP was born out of a need for individual state programs to work together in discussing and promoting best practices and especially to influence national public policy.”1
For the last quarter century the FSPHP has pushed a plethora of both practice and policy (legal, regulatory and healthcare) that claims to assist state physician health programs in identifying, managing and monitoring impaired physicians and protect the public from harm.
It is time we examined both the authority and the knowledge claims on which they are based. Kathryn Pyne Addelson said: “It is the unexamined exercise of cognitive authority within our present social arrangements that is most to be feared. Illegitimate politicization and rampant irrationality find their most fruitful soil when our activities are mystified and protected from criticism.” This is applicable here. The FSPHP has been an unopposed and unexamined authority for the past quarter-century and, as the recent articles published on Medscape and in the BMJ are revealing -they are also irrational and illegitimate authority. When confronted with direct and precise questions concerning misconduct and abuse they are incapable of responding with direct and precise answers. Moreover, the misconduct is not subtle and artful but blatant and crude. This is a system of oppressions, injustices and illusions. We call upon all those of good will in both the medical profession and the public at large to join us in this confrontation with illegitimate, irrational and immoral authority.
LikeLike
[…] Source: One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their re… […]
LikeLike