Medical employee ethics: a staff training tool

Ethics is a critical part of medical employee education and is a subject that requires frequent and regular consideration and attention. This article defines ethics particularly as it applies to an individual who works in a medical practice and explores five core ethical values for all medical practice personnel. It suggests the benefits of basing management practices and decisions on ethical core values and explores specific ways that ethics can affect an individual's emotional and physical well being. This article also offers ethical guidelines specifically for medical practice employees regarding the use of their time at work and their workplace communications. Finally, this article offers a set of questions a medical practice employee can use when working through an ethical dilemma and dispels six common myths about medical practice ethics.