Serving the Healthcare licensing community since 1992
Serving the Healthcare licensing community since 1992
| CPEP and ProBE |
The ProBE Program is offered six times each year – in January, March, May, July, September, and November (see current schedule). The initial meeting of the weekend (click for outline) is held on a Friday evening and the last session is completed in the early afternoon on Sunday. In January, March, July and September ProBE is convened in the academic retreat setting of the Rutgers University Inn and Conference Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Conveniently for travel, the Center is two miles from the New Jersey Turnpike (Exit 9) and about 25 minutes from Newark International Airport. It is set on the former Lindenwood estate, nestled in a quiet wooded seclusion and offers very reasonably priced bed-and-breakfast accommodations for ProBE attendees who choose not to commute ($84 single/ $95 double).
In May and November, we meet in Denver, Colorado, at the Radisson Stapleton Plaza Hotel with reasonably priced accommodations for ProBE attendees who choose not to commute ($72 single or double). A free shuttle service from the Denver Internatuonal Airport takes 20 minutes.
It is in the privacy of these settings that we engage in the exploration of ethics and the health care professions.
Two standards for teaching and learning practical ethics drivesProBE. First, that ethics is best taught and learned in a context of intensive small group discussions. Limited to no more than 14 participants, the program requires that those enrolled fully participate in the seminar assignments, discussions and other activities. Second, that the subject of problem-based ethics is best focused on matters of direct and immediate concern. This obligates each participant to maintain a posture of openness and a willingness to share and discuss his/her particular problem in professional ethics.
Since the content of every session is tailored to the problems in professional ethics that are brought to the table by the participants, each offering of the ProBE Program is unique in substance. At the same time, the ProBE intervention maintains a broad conceptual framework within which the specific problems are explored and developed. The reading assignments and exercises are focused on accountability and medical ethics in the context of contemporary cultural and legal aspects of the healthcare professions.
The ProBE Program is marked by cooperative team-teaching work of the faculty, which assures a variety of perspectives while maintaining focus on the concerns of individual participants. This approach allows for introspection and the sharing of coping strategies as well as traditional didactic presentations, seminar discussion, and case study.These approaches run through all of the seven sessions, -- from Fridays evening to Sunday afternoon:
- A DIDACTIC presentation of materials provides the necessary baseline for the communication of concepts and structure of the discipline.
- CASE BASED STUDY invites participants to respond to real cases – most especially their own and each other’s -- and to learn how to acknowledge problems and to formulate constructive responses.
- INTROSPECTION and acknowledgment of the infraction provides the first basis for remediation.
- Finally, in the real and fluid professional situations in which ethically charged situations abound, the professional needs to be prepared with COPING STRATEGIES for negotiating professional "rules of the road."
The Seven Sessions(Click here to see an Overview of the ProBE Weekend)
Session 1 -- The Good Doctor
IMAGINE THAT YOU WERE ASKED TO ADVISE a pre-med college senior about to write his "personal statement" for admissions to a medical school. What attributes and personal characteristics would you wish an aspiring physician to stress and enhance? How would you help that student put his/her best foot forward? Through this exercise, the seasoned physician serves as the professional mentor to this fictional medical student as we explore together what it means to be a "good doctor" in the contemporary world.
Session 2 -- Infractions, Sanctions and Discipline
WHAT CHARGES LEAD YOU TO PARTICIPATE in this intervention? In this session each participant will be asked to write a summary of the charges brought against him/her and briefly to present it within a ten-minute time frame. This is the initial problem-based presentation which raises the range of issues to be explored in the remaining sessions.
Guidelines for this exercise are provided in the syllabus.
Attendees are also required to provide a formal CV.Session 3 -- Clinician--Patient Relationship: Models
THE CORE OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS STARTS WITH THE INTEGRITY of the relationship with the patient. What is the range of roles assumed by physicians in that relationship? What are the moral constraints within that context? Are there universal obligof the clinical relationship with the patient. What is the range of roles assumed by physicians in that relationship? What are the moral constraints within that context? Are there universal obligations in this relationship? Are there exceptions?
We consider several cases to explore the nature of and variations in the clinician-patient relationship. Exploration includes initiating and discontinuing the relationship; disclosure, consent and confidentiality; and the models of the physician as technician, advisor, friend, and/or advocate.Session 4. -- Clinician—Patient—Social Relationship: Boundaries
PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY IS DEFINED, in part, by the boundaries within which the professional works, circumscribing a range of competencies and disciplining personal conduct. Boundaries also help define the external limits of the professional’s universe, defining a wide range of social standards to which the physician is accountable. Maintaining "rules of the road" protects both society and the professions from abuses of power. These may manifest in such infractions as sexual misconduct, abuse of reimbursement and other incentives for services, or falsification of records. In this context, we consider how practice style relates to the boundary aspects of physician-patient relationships.
Session 5. -- Accountability Within the Profession
WHAT DOES YOUR PROFESSION SAY IT EXPECTS OF ITS MEMBERS? Do professional codes – Hippocratic, The American Medical Association Principles, or The Code for Nurses, for example -- offer useful guidance? Do they provide sufficient bases for ‘internal’ controls? For whistle-blowing? For ‘external’ policing? For relationship with other health professions? For managing accountability to oversight agencies such as peer review organizations?
Session 6. -- Holding the Profession Accountable: The Practice of Accountability
WHAT IS THE BASIS FOR THE PROFESSION’S ACCOUNTABILITY to the public in the current health care environment? Is there an ethical obligation regarding impaired or errant colleagues? What creates such an obligation? Does the public have legitimate interest in controlling professional practice and health care practitioners? Are there ethical principles underlying licensing board regulations and such federal initiatives as The National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) and The Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank (HIPDB)? Alternative models for this accountability, taken from other societies, are examined to provide insight into the organization of regulatory oversight.
Session 7. – Summing Up: Conceptual Resources and Overview
REVISITING THE KEY THEMES OF THE PROGRAM, the cases on the table and relevant ethical and social theories is the focus of this final session. We offer detailed conceptual and value-based guidelines for thinking about and writing the final essay. We consider, together, their application to the specific cases of participants. We also reconsider earlier deliberations, tying up of loose strings, and gathering final thoughts to provide closure to the experience.
This essay will be completed and returned to CPEP within two weeks of The ProBE Program session. Along with other elements of participation, the essay is required for certification of successful completion of The ProBE Program. It will be forwarded to the licensing board (or other agency), together with commentary by the faculty, for review.
At Completion ofThe ProBE Program
EACH PARTICIPANT WILL BE ASSESSED by the faculty. Assessment will be made on the basis of attendance, participation and completion of assignments. For each person who completes all course elements, CPEP will send to the appropriate Board (or other agency): (1) certification of participation, (2) the final essay with faculty commentary, and (3) an overall opinion of the participant’s capacities for ethical reasoning and insight as demonstrated over the whole course of The ProBE Program. A copy of this assessment letter is sent to the participant along with the certificate of completion.
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CPEP - Center for Personalized Education for Physicians |
Contacts: |
Cindy Usick, ProBE Program Coordinator Joseph d'Oronzio, PhD, MTH ProBE Program Director |