Institutional Bioethical Malpractice at Spanish Public Hospitals

ABSTRACT

Three recent studies carried out in the Spanish regions of Madrid, Valencia, and Murcia have shown that medical residents at public hospitals are systematically required to work for more than 48 hours a week. This practice is institutionalised, and there are indicators suggesting that it also occurs in other public hospitals throughout Spain. The obligation to work excessive hours has been shown to have harmful consequences for workers’ physical and psychological health while jeopardizing residents’ and patients’ safety. I argue that behaviours contrary to people’s health and safety imply bioethical and, in this case, institutional, malpractice.

KEYWORDS:

• Physician residents
• duty hours
• malpractice
• bioethics
• Spain

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

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David Alvargonzález

David Alvargonzález is born in 1960. He received his B.A. in philosophy in1983, and continued his studies in philosophy, under the direction of Gustavo Bueno, graduating with a Ph.D. in 1988. He is currently tenure professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Oviedo, and tutor at the UNED (Spanish Open University). His early work concentrated in the epistemology of cultural materialism and in the history of biology (Linnaeus, Darwin). His subsequent research has focused on the philosophy of social sciences, the philosophy of religion and, more recently, on bioethics.