ABSTRACT
When state medical boards take action against physicians, a “sanction-oriented” approach has signicant practical consequences, which limit this approach’s eectiveness. For example, when otherwise qualied and capable doctors lose their ability to practice, their patients experience signicant consequences and the already-strained physician workforce is further depleted. As Dilts and Sargent wrote in an earlier edition of this textbook, “Simply weeding out detected oenders did not materially advance the safety of patients, was needlessly wasteful of valuable medical skills and, not least, was inhumane” (Dilts and Sargent 2003, 171). Improved regulatory practices have permitted doctors, whose practices are adversely aected by the symptoms and disability caused by illness, to enter into formal arrangements with their state’s medical board to obtain appropriate treatment, while continuing to practice under specied conditions and limitations, rather than be sanctioned (e.g., be formally admonished, have their medical license suspended or revoked). ese arrangements are called probationary agreements, stipulations, or consent agreements.
