In the public interest : medical licensing and the disciplinary process / Ruth Horowitz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horowitz, Ruth, 1947-

Series:

Critical issues in health and medicine.

Critical Issues in Health and Medicine

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Physicians--Licenses--United States.

Physicians.

Clinical competence--United States.

Clinical competence.

Medical policy--United States.

Medical policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (278 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How do we know when physicians practice medicine safely? Can we trust doctors to discipline their own? What is a proper role of experts in a democracy? In the Public Interest raises these provocative questions, using medical licensing and discipline to advocate for a needed overhaul of how we decide public good in a society dominated by private interest groups. Throughout the twentieth century, American physicians built a powerful profession, but their drive toward professional autonomy has made outside observers increasingly concerned about physicians’ ability to separate their own interests from those of the general public. Ruth Horowitz traces the history of medical licensure and the mechanisms that democratic societies have developed to certify doctors to deliver critical services. Combining her skills as a public member of medical licensing boards and as an ethnographer, Horowitz illuminates the workings of the crucial public institutions charged with maintaining public safety. She demonstrates the complex agendas different actors bring to board deliberations, the variations in the board authority across the country, the unevenly distributed institutional resources available to board members, and the difficulties non-physician members face as they struggle to balance interests of the parties involved. In the Public Interest suggests new procedures, resource allocation, and educational initiatives to increase physician oversight. Horowitz makes the case for regulations modeled after deliberative democracy that promise to open debates to the general public and allow public members to take a more active part in the decision-making process that affects vital community interests.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: Medical Boards and the Public Interest

Chapter 1. Public Member, Researcher, and Public Sociologist: The Genesis of a Project

Chapter 2. How Licensure Became a Medical Institution

Chapter 3. Public Participation: The Federal Bureaucracy Starts a Public Dialogue

Chapter 4. The State, the Media, and the Shaping of Public Opinion

Chapter 5. Rhetorics of Law, Medicine, and Public Interest Shape Board Work

Chapter 6. Medical and Legal Discourses in Investigatory Committees

Chapter 7. Hearing and Sanction Deliberations: Transparency and Fact Construction Issues

Chapter 8. Democratic Deliberation and the Public Interest

Conclusion: An Exercise in Democratic Governance

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-246) and index.

ISBN:

0-8135-5428-4

OCLC:

830022784