Professional codes of conduct

A professional code of conduct serves several purposes to allow a profession to regulate itself to state the agreed-upon values of a profession to make... 

The American Herbalists Guild was founded in 1989 by 30 prominent American herbalists. The guild is the only organization in the United States that represents clinical or medical herbalists. Professional membership is by peer review. Members adhere to a professional code of conduct and represent some of the finest herbal practitioners in this country. The Guild also publishes a journal. The Herbalist. 

Working at all times within clinical competence and professional code of conduct... 

The collectivist approach is implicit in the idea of a professional code of conduct The profession has decided collectively that its members must abide by certain rules and, by electing to join the profession, members accept this. There is still, of course, some room for individual judgement in interpreting the rales in particular cases. 

Professional codes of conduct are, by their very nature, collectivist and rale-based. Nevertheless, rule-based ethical systems always seem too rigid and restricted to handle complicated situations on their own and they are incapable of handling situations in which rales conflict or several different actions are possible but all in some way violate the rules. The interpretation of the rules and their application to specific situations may therefore involve individual, consequential reasoning. Although the individual codes themselves have an absolutist tone, the difficulty of establishing international codes has led professional bodies collectively to accept a moral relativism and to dechne, for example, to insist that all professional codes demand that members respect human rights. 

More extensive discussion of professional codes of conduct, along with discussion of other and wider aspects of professionahsm will be found in ... 

Staff should be encouraged to develop personal and professional codes of conduct in the organization. Just like the Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP) recognizes a code of ethics and professional conduct for its manbers, likewise all staff members of an organization should be inspired to develop their own personal and professional codes of safe conduct. Their code should detail ethics and professional standards in a way that is similar to the BCSP s code. 

At the outset here, we reiterate that collection of material from caves is a highly sensitive issue and at all times researchers must be aware of conservation issues regarding cave deposits. To quote from the National Speleological Society (USA) Code of Conduct, scientific collection should be professional, selective, and minimal. ... 

All societies have their rules of play their institutions. These institutions can be defined as the restrictions created by humanity to give structure to political, economic and social interaction. A society s institutions are at the same time its rules of play and its safeguard mechanisms. They can be formal, such as the Constitution, laws, property rights and ethical codes, or informal, such as customs, traditions and expected codes of conduct in a professional group. 

Measures aimed at altering behaviour (in users, the industry itself and health professionals, in order to attain a more rational use of pharmaceuticals and more ethical codes of conduct) from which indirect effects on expenditure may be derived ... 

Since SYSCO does not itself manufacture, a quality assurance team of more than 180 professionals determines specifications for each own-brand item and also sets criteria for raw materials and for the standards that manufacturers and processors must follow for food safety, quality, and consistency, as well as for social responsibility and supplier codes of conduct. This quality assurance team identifies and establishes supply sources and audits those suppliers to enforce SYSCO s strict standards for various factors like facility conditions and sanitary measures. Inspectors are at the plants as bacon comes off the production line, or follow produce from field to cooler to assure proper holding temperatures and product integrity. SYSCO s program is unmatched in the food industry. The number of people and level of resources committed to supporting the integrity of the products are far superior to those of other industry competitors, who may devote merely a handful of personnel to these tasks, if they are undertaken at all. 

Prescription medicines may only be advertised to healthcare professionals - they may not be advertised to consumers. Advertisements of prescription medicines directed at healthcare professionals are regulated under a self-regulatory Code of Conduct administered by Medicines Australia. First published in 1960, it includes... 

Setting educational standards for health professionals and developing and enforcing codes of conduct this requires the cooperation of the professional societies and universities... 

As a professional organization, one of the roles of the American Chemical Society is to present chemistry in a positive light. To promote the highest standards among its members, the ACS has adopted a code of conduct. The code presents basic principles to guide the action and responsibilities of chemists. 

In a private letter addressed to the Chief Executive Officers of Rx D s member firms, the Rx D president stated "It is my obligation to inform you of a serious situation regarding one of our member companies, and of the industry as a whole, as a result of repeated non-compliance with the code of conduct. AstraZeneca Canada Inc. has reached an unprecedented number of infractions recorded in a second consecutive 12-month period" (Blackwell 2005). The company was put on six months probation and an Rx D spokesperson later stated that if it did violate the code again while on probation, it could be expelled. The organization also ordered AstraZeneca to communicate the action to healthcare professionals involved in the infractions and requested its CEO to appear before the Rx D s board. No such measures have ever been taken before according to an Rx D spokesperson (Blackwell 2005). 

Webster s Dictionary defines a standard as something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example and states that standard applies to any definite rule, principle, or measure established by authority (standards of behavior) (Webster s, 2003). From a contemporary managerial perspective, standards of conduct for a pharmacist and for the operation of a pharmacy are derived both from laws and from professional standards or values. Standards for professional conduct and the operation of a pharmacy, whether stated formally in statutes and regulations or present in professional codes of ethics, are important for managers to understand and apply. Violations of these standards can affect the licensure status of a pharmacy practice site and/or its pharmacists, may result in litigation if a patient is harmed subsequent to a violation, and in the most serious cases can result in criminal prosecution. Both criminal prosecution and civil liability resulted in the case of Robert Courtney, the pharmacist discussed in the scenario. Courtney was sentenced to 30 years in prison, fined 25,000, and ordered to pay 10.4 million in restitution to the patients and families affected. These penalties were in addition to the civil judgment of 2.2 billion (Stafford, 2002). 

As mentioned above, it is usual for members of advisory boards to be paid a consultancy fee as laid down in a formal contract. The guidance given with respect to the amount in most codes of conduct is that this should be in line with professional rates of remuneration and should reflect the amount of time spent in the advisory capacity. For individual country guidance, consult Section 7.5, p. 105. 

The Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) code of conduct addresses how pharmaceutical companies should interact with healthcare professionals. The interactions should be focused on informing these professionals about products, providing scientific and educational information, and supporting medical research and education to benefit patients. 

Internet There is no specific guidance on the use of the internet in the Irish code of conduct, but advertising on the internet is subject to the same rules as other advertising. Advertising on the internet for POMs must therefore be restricted to healthcare professionals. 

All staff members should comply with a code of conduct which should guide all their professional activities. More detail on codes of conduct is given in section 1.2.4. An example of a code of conduct is shown in Appendix 1. 

The second definition of ethics relates to conduct— modelers should conform to professional standards of conduct. Obviously one code of conduct to which modelers should conform to are the norms related to responsibilities becoming a scientist. All scientists have a duty to ensure their work serves desirable ends (Shrader-Frechette, 1994). Hence, as a scientist one must strive to not harm the public, research subjects, democratic institutions, and the environment. To those ends, the foremost ethical goal in science is to not deceive, inveigle, or obfuscate the results of our research nor should others be allowed to do so. In other words, scientists must not commit fraud and neither should others be allowed to use our research to commit fraud. 

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