Determinants of Patients’ Perception of Healthcare Professionals’ Ethics in Bangladesh

Abstract

Employees in organizations face a myriad of moral issues in their everyday decisionmaking. It is of great significance when the decisions entail a professional conduct where the individuals have fiduciary relationship with one or more stakeholders-as in the case of doctors and patients. In the healthcare sector of Bangladesh, a number of malpractices and unethical behaviours have been highlighted in the media and by the insiders to the industry. Hence, the aim of this exploratory research was to see the prevalence of such practices and try to relate these practices with the existing HR scenario of the respective organizations. The study was conducted using the questionnaire survey method, where response from 128 patients were taken to carry out a one-tailed hypotheses testing. Moreover, a few semi-structured interviews were also carried out with a number of industry experts (particularly representing the management of a number of healthcare organizations). The findings indicated that majority of patients do feel that doctors wilfully prescribe specific brands of medicine in majority of the cases and they also perceive prescription of brand drugs, repeat medical tests (particularly from referred diagnostic centres) as unethical. Such behaviours are further questioned on account of the presence of similar to commission-based pay in their respective organizations etc.

Examining the impact of marketing techniques on the prescription behavior of physicians with ethical ideology as a moderator

“…The taxonomy of above ideologies has been summarized in Figure 1. Another study conducted in Bangladesh by Ahmed (2019) observed that the pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies pay huge kickbacks to health-care professionals to increase the sales of their companies. However, these marketing costs are passed on to the patients, as an increase in the price of the drugs.…”

“…Evolving technologies and improved civilization have changed companies’ ways of work over time, as most of them use strategies that support them in improving sales in a competitive environment (Ahmed, 2019). Further, rapid population growth and economic developments have led pharmaceutical companies to improve health-care services with greater availability of pharmaceutical products (Ahmed et al , 2014).…”