Inappropriate attitudes, fitness to practise and the challenges facing medical educators

Abstract

The author outlines a number of reasons why morally inappropriate attitudes may give rise to concerns about fitness to practise. He argues that inappropriate attitudes may raise such concerns because they can lead to harmful behaviours (such as a failure to give proper care or treatment), and because they are often themselves harmful (both because of the offence that they can cause and because of the unhealthy pall that they may cast over relations between healthcare practitioners and patients). He also outlines some of the challenges that the cultivation and assessment of attitudes in students raise for medical educators and some of the ways in which those challenges may be approached and possibly overcome.