On being a person of integrity ... or ethics and other liabilities

The emergence of managed care and the health industry's response to it has precipitated a moral crisis for many health care professionals. Caught between the patients' best interests and the employers' and payers' restrictions, professionals find their good intentions tested. In this article, the author distinguishes moral from ethical problems and suggests that self-examination and self-diagnosis of the mindsets and conditions that contribute to moral malfunctioning in the workplace--self-management at the individual level--is essential for maintaining the ethical stance of the profession and the integrity of the professional.