Within our Medical Whistleblower Organization trust is one of the most important assets we have. It is also the easiest asset to lose and very hard to rebuild. Trust is the key ingredient which leads to relationship building, which in turn leads to cooperative, collaborative opportunities to advance our goals and objectives.
How many of you have developed strategic plans for a non-profit organization? What is the first question one needs to ask in regards to strategic planning? Is it to define what goals and objectives they want to achieve? Where do they want to be in three years or five years from now? And how do you plan to get there?
Some will state that grant writing is the answer. Others have ideas for more direct grass roots ways to raise funds. Often I will hear that money is the answer. Other times I hear that political power is the answer. Many will say that creating strategic alliances or relationships with other organizations is the way to reach our goals, or by increasing our media coverage. Certainly we can improve our direct mail campaigns or other fund raising activities. We can certainly conference with others and discuss how important it is to work cooperatively to reach our common goals. But ultimately we must recognize that the motivating force behind deep social change is a shared emotional bond or trust between people.
In communication it is important to not get lost on focusing on achieving your goals and objectives and thereby failing to recognize that trust is the foundation of all our efforts. When someone goes as far as to ignore the trust factor and move forward with their own agenda, they undermine their own forward progress and will fall short of their ultimate goal.
If increased funding is one of your organization's key strategic goals but you engage in unethical fundraising behavior - such as false advertising or deceptive practices then you might gain in the short run but in the long term you will erode the trust of the public and lose your good name. These unethical practices do not bode well for a non-profit organization’s long term survivability.
We need to look long and hard at ourselves and ask “What are we going to do to earn the trust – both inside and outside of our organization –that will help us form the kind of emotional bond with others that will enable us to achieve our goals and objectives?”
We need to ask who our partners in this fight are. Who are the stakeholders who care about Medical Whistleblower issues? There are of course, the Medical Whistleblowers themselves. But there are also patient advocates. Of these two groups, who do you believe have the greatest number of people, financial resources, or grassroots political power? I assert that it is the Patient Advocates that win that comparison without a doubt.
So we, as Medical Whistleblowers, need to build trust with those who advocate for patient rights. Medical Whistleblowers must be found to be the ultimate safeguard for patient care, safety and human rights. This means we must listen to the patient advocate concerns if they express a lack of confidence in our ability to determine who should have advocacy as a Medical Whistleblower. We also must ask for them to understand the need for restraint with public allegations especially when there may have been Bad Faith Peer Review against a Medical Professional. There will be cases where our advocacy for the medical professional will seem initially to be in conflict with the advocacy for the patient, but on more careful reflection will reveal a commonality of purpose to safeguard the public’s health and safety. Medical Whistleblowers will be found to be the ultimate safeguard for patient care, safety and human rights. Individual cases present many problems which we must face with humility and honesty. It is a sad fact that there are medical professionals who do need to be disciplined, some who even need their medical licenses revoked.
True Medical Whistleblowers are for the integrity of the medical system and the protection of patients.
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