Medical Ethics Case Summary

Dr. David Baird has been working in field of dermatology in the Detroit, Michigan area for over twenty years. In his scope of practice, he uses the American Academy of Dermatology and AAD Association Code of Medical Ethics as a professional code of conduct. In addition, he carries a personal practice mission statement stating “To provide professional, compassionate, and timely care to the dermatology patient”.1
In regard to the most challenging sections of the AAD’s Code of Ethicsto implement on a daily basis, Dr. Baird states that overall generality of the code makes it hard to apply into every situation because patient circumstances can vary widely. For example, he detailed two separate cases of similarly situated female patients. Patient A was in her late nineties and suffered from extreme dementia which left her …show more content…
Baird faced in the code of the ethics is confronting unethical behaviors of other healthcare professionals. Although, it states in section II A under Personal Conduct that “dermatologists are expected to exercise appropriate respect for other healthcare professionals”, Dr. Baird found this problematic when he encountered a professional who misdiagnosed and mistreated a patient.2 He received a female patient from another healthcare professional who had come into his office to receive a specific skin cancer procedure. However when he was pre-examining the patient, he found that she was drastically misdiagnosed and had no cancer at all. From there, he did further research on the professional who originally had given the cancer diagnosis and found that this doctor had self-listed himself as a dermatologist, but was only licensed to practice in pediatrics. Because this doctor had committed fraud, Dr. Baird reported this professional to the board because he had felt it was his moral duty. While he was not able to maintain respect for this doctor’s practice, it was imperative that he broke the code for the patient’s best