Articles by Thea Dunmire JD-CIH-CSP

Last week, Farid Fata, a Michigan doctor, was sentenced to 45 years in jail for subjecting more than 500 patients to cancer treatments they did not need so he could collect millions in insurance payments. According to CBS News, he told healthy patients they were sick, he told sick patients they were dying, and he told dying patients he was their only hope. All in order to file insurance claims.

Making mistakes is part of being human. There are many factors that contribute to making mistakes, including inattention, lack of experience and over-confidence. In recent years, the field of behavior-based safety has exploded. Much of its focus is on assessing why people make mistakes, and what to do about it.

In the 1960s, there was a popular show called Candid Camera. It was one of the first reality TV shows. The premise of the show was that individuals were secretly filmed after being placed in unusual, ridiculous or embarrassing situations.

I got an e-mail recently from a colleague in which he expressed his displeasure with a business partner who was very late in paying him.  What was particularly troubling to him was the fact that the partner’s business was based on selling integrity.

The fear of “what if” is a significant driver in making ethical decisions. This fear can lead to positive results •  Fear of getting in an accident – can prevent drinking and driving •  Fear of getting caught – can prevent falsifying information •  Fear of hurting someone else – can prevent unsafe behavior.

One of the more difficult situations in which to make an ethical decision is when more than one person is potentially impacted by your action and their expectations of how you should proceed are in conflict.

One of the ongoing discussions about OH&S management systems revolves around what it is exactly that the organization should be accomplishing. In “standards speak” this is referred to as the “intended outcomes” of the OH&S management system.

The last few weeks I have been focused on the difficult task of drafting and analyzing comments on the draft ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 standards. This has caused me to focus on the issue of making commitments.
 

In the last two weeks, the United States has decided to send military personnel and aid workers to Africa in an attempt to help address the Ebola outbreak. Clearly, assistance is needed but decisions regarding what should be done are more complicated that sending in more people.

In discussions of ethics, we often focus on rules. We analyze codes of ethics and we evaluate our legal obligations. Yet, ethical conduct incorporates three values that we intrinsically understand yet often have difficulty defining – trust, transparency and truthfulness.