Head in the Sand: The Potential Consequences of Doing Nothing

By Nancy R. Kirsch, PT, DPT, PhD
February 2014

Failure to act on warning signs related to an employee's behavior not only is unwise but also is unethical, and it may have profound societal repercussions. Consider the following scenario.

Where There's Smoke, No Firing

Sarah is a long time supervisor at Prime Time Therapy Services in upstate New York. Carol is in her third week at the practice. Late one morning, Carol steps into Sarah's office, holding a newspaper. She closes the door behind her and asks if Sarah has read or heard about the arrest of a physical therapist (PT) who has been charged with molesting a 13-year-old patient in the outpatient department of a local hospital. 

"I can't imagine anyone in our profession violating the public's trust in such a horrible way," says a visibly shaken Carol. 

"Unfortunately, there are predators in all walks of life," Sarah responds. "But you're right—if it's true, it's shocking." 

Carol, a new graduate who recently earned her doctor of physical therapy degree from a university in California and moved East to join her fiancé, asks, "I'm curious, since you've been a PT in this area for a long time-have you ever run into this guy?" She reads from the newspaper a name Sarah doesn't recognize. There is no photo of the accused PT in the article. 

"No, it doesn't ring a bell," Sarah answers. 

A few hours later, however, something kicks in, and she realizes that not only has she crossed paths with the man she knew by an abbreviation of the middle name cited in the newspaper article, but that he actually worked at Prime Time briefly about 5 years ago. She can picture him in her head but can't immediately recall much about him or his tenure at the practice. At the end of the day she seeks out Tim, a veteran physical therapist assistant at Prime Time with whom she sometimes reminisces about "the old days." 

Tim is surprised that Sarah's memory of their 1-time colleague seems fuzzy. "Don't you remember that time I told you I overheard him seeming to be coming on to a patient who couldn't have been more than 12?" he asks. "The guy denied it, of course, and said I'd misheard him and taken things out of context. I also told you about the time I suspected he'd taken a photo of a young girl while she was doing her exercises on a mat, because when I came into the room he stuffed his phone in his pocket and looked all nervous." 

"Oh my gosh, yes!" Sarah now recalls. "You know, I'd talked to him about those incidents, and I wasn't completely satisfied with his answers. I'd never seen any suspect behavior myself, but you weren't the only person working here back then who shared suspicions with me. He was a smooth talker, but I was thinking of putting him on probation when he told me he was leaving after only having been here for, what, 4 months? I just kind of thought, 'Good riddance.' 

"In fact, when another clinic called me for a reference," she now recalls, "I certainly wasn't effusive, but I was factual about what I saw as being his strengths. I felt uncomfortable mentioning the other stuff because it was unproven. I don't know if he ultimately got that job, but obviously he found his way to the hospital at some point." 

There's an uncomfortable silence as both Tim and Sarah simultaneously wonder if Sarah might somehow have altered the course of subsequent events. "What could I have done differently?" she asks herself, feeling guilty about her inaction. "What if I'd really tried to get to the bottom of people's suspicions? What if that had led to my firing the guy? What effect might that have had? Should I have reported him to law enforcement, even though all I had was 'smoke' but no 'fire'? What were my ethical obligations in that situation?" 

Tim starts putting on his coat to go home. "Well, you never really know about people, or what they might do," he says, uneasily, in a way that tells Sarah he neither is absolving nor completely indicting her. 

"No, I suppose you don't," she responds. 

Reprinted from PT in M. 2014;6(1):58-62, with permission of the American Physical Therapy Association. Copyright©2014 American Physical Therapy Association. Further reproduction or redistribution requires written approval from APTA.