How to wrangle in docs gone wild

A physician who threatened to use an AK-47, a sexually harassing doctor who looked at porn on work computers and a specialist who used to cause nurses to draw straws with the loser having to interact with her. These were some of the horror stories about disruptive provider behavior that Dean White, a Texas-based consultant and former chief of the medical staff at Texas Health Harris Methodist HEB Hospital in Dallas, had shared at this week’s American College of Healthcare Executives’ (ACHE) annual congress in Chicago.

The Joint Commission requires that accredited institutions have a code of conduct that defines acceptable, disruptive and inappropriate behaviors. In addition, leaders must create and implement a process for managing that. Although The Joint Commission changed the elements of performance standards language from “disruptive behavior” to “behavior or behaviors that undermine the culture of safety,” it’s essentially the same thing by a different name, White noted. “If it quacks like a duck …” White said Wednesday regarding the disruptive terminology.

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