This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: The recent article by Mr Skolnick¹ examining care of prison inmates by impaired disciplined physicians was both informative and controversial. We were disconcerted to learn that some state boards provided restricted licenses to physicians who appeared to have persistent character flaws in personal and professional judgment. However, it may be important to distinguish between impaired and disciplined as the terminology relates to functional capacity. Impaired implies an enduring condition, which without effective treatment is not amenable to remission (eg, mental illness, drug addiction). As it relates to functional capacity, it is a status that, if not in remission, renders the practitioner unable to provide competent medical services. Disciplined is a status designated by the medical board and incurred as a result either of the consequences of unarrested impairment or of a specific infraction. Thus, whereas an impaired physician would be unable to render competent medical services, the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Prison Deaths Spotlight How Boards Handle Impaired, Disciplined Physicians
Andrew A. Skolnick
JAMA. 1998;280(16):1387-1390.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT