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Mixed Messages Are Just a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen
A few weeks ago, I wrote Fool Me Once, Shame on You, But Fool Me Twice about the problems that can hurt patient-clients which also hurt our profession because they violate our ethical principles and best practices. Those problems range from advocates working beyond their own abilities to help clients because they may not have the experience or education to do so, to selling medical products on their websites, and others. Today we’re looking at the promised Example #2 of this problem in hopes of a hard stop. That problem: the danger of mixed messages. As stated in the Fool Me Once post, I fully expect that some of you will be appalled, possibly upset with me, because you’ve not thought of these as violations or misrepresentations. Some of you innocently don’t realize these transgressions; but now, as of reading this post, you are on notice…. please look at this not as judgment, but as a time for correction. Mixed Messages Sometimes our words and behavior – vs – what we as private patient advocates can do ethically, even legally, are in conflict. Sometimes subtle, sometimes more blatant, it’s those mixed messages that will cause an advocate to be sued one day and, frankly, it will be his or her own fault because it is easily preventable. Further, when that advocate is sued, his or her liability insurance, which is purchased specifically to pay for legal assistance, will look at these mixed messages and refuse to provide that cost support for legal needs. What’s that lawsuit-provoking mixed message? Patient advocacy is not medical. And yet, you could never prove that by the behavior and marketing materials of too many advocates. We’ll begin with photographic images that say one thing when something else is true. Nurses are the biggest perpetrators of this problem, although it’s not limited to them. I call it stethoscope-itis. That is – the photography found on many advocates’ websites, many brochures, even some business cards, which shows someone with a stethoscope, or using a blood pressure cuff, or holding a thermometer, or wearing a nurses uniform or…