What Is Healthcare Misconduct?

Everything Health & Medical Centers Need to Know

If you run a healthcare organization, whether it’s a hospital, clinic, or home care service, understanding healthcare misconduct isn’t just a compliance box to check. It’s about protecting your patients, your team, and your reputation.

Healthcare misconduct covers a wide range of actions that go against professional, legal, or ethical standards. It can happen in hospitals, nursing homes, home care, research labs, pretty much anywhere healthcare happens. And the stakes are high: people’s health and lives depend on it.

In this post, we’ll break down:

• What healthcare misconduct is
• The different types you should watch for
• Why it matters for your business
• How to prevent it
• And some FAQs to clear things up

What Does Healthcare Misconduct Actually Mean?

Healthcare misconduct is any behavior by a medical professional that puts patient safety, public trust, or research integrity at risk. It could be an honest mistake due to lack of training—or it could be something intentional. Either way, it’s a serious issue.

Healthcare misconduct includes things like:

• Medical malpractice: unintentional mistakes that harm patients
• Medical misconduct: intentional bad behavior for personal gain
• Research misconduct: like falsifying study results
• Unprofessional conduct: breaking rules or ethics in patient care

4 Types of Healthcare Misconduct You Should Know

1. Medical Malpractice vs. Medical Misconduct

The difference between medical malpractice and medical misconduct are: 

• Medical Malpractice: When a healthcare provider makes an unintentional mistake such as a misdiagnosis or surgical error that causes harm. It’s about negligence, not intent.
• Medical Misconduct: When a healthcare provider does something knowingly wrong, like performing unnecessary surgeries for extra money or prescribing meds inappropriately.

Both can lead to lawsuits, fines, or losing a medical license.

2. Unprofessional Conduct in Healthcare

Unprofessional conduct in healthcare spans across: 

• HIPAA violations: Sharing patient info without permission
• Working while impaired: Alcohol, drugs, mental health issues
• Fraud: Falsifying records or credentials
• Neglicence: Patient abandonment or unsafe care
• Boundary violations: Inappropriate relationships or behavior

In nursing specifically, boards of nursing handle complaints and investigations if someone reports unprofessional conduct.

3. Research Misconduct

In the field of research, misconduct looks like: 

• Fabrication: Making up data.
• Falsification: Changing data to get a desired result.
• Plagiarism: Copying someone else’s work without credit.

When this happens in healthcare research, it puts patient safety at risk. Imagine a new drug approved based on fake results, this is why integrity in research matters.

4. Professional Misconduct in Home Care

Home-care nursing staff face unique challenges because they often work alone in patients’ homes. In a nationwide Dutch survey:

• 42% of home-care nurses reported noticing or suspecting misconduct by a colleague in the past year.
• Staff found it harder to report impairment (like substance abuse) than incompetence (lack of skills).
• A positive team climate, open discussion of incidents, and good communication were considered key to preventing misconduct.

Why Healthcare Misconduct Matters

Healthcare misconduct isn’t rare. It includes abuse, fraud, racism, and privacy violations that often show up on social media before they show up on the job. Traditional background checks usually miss these risks.

Social media screening helps healthcare organizations detect these risks before hiring. It fills gaps that criminal checks can’t, helping protect patient safety, trust, and organizational reputation.

Whether it’s malpractice, unprofessional behavior, or fraud, misconduct leads to:

• Patient harm or even death
• Lawsuits and financial loss
• Reputation damage
• Loss of public trust

For healthcare centers, that can mean losing your license to operate, facing huge fines, or struggling to attract new patients and staff.

How Can You Prevent Healthcare Misconduct?

Misconduct prevention starts with smarter hiring, and online screening is now an essential layer in healthcare risk management. 

Here’s what works best according to experts:

• Promote a positive team culture: Make sure your people feel safe raising concerns.
• Train staff regularly: Ethics, HIPAA, safety protocols, scope of practice.
• Set clear rules: Update your codes of conduct, patient care guidelines, and research integrity protocols should be well-defined and consistently enforced.
• Implement a social media policy: Establishing a clear social media policy helps employees understand exactly what is and isn’t acceptable—both on and off the clock. From HIPAA compliance to broader standards like respect, tolerance, and professionalism, this policy should outline expectations, disciplinary processes, and the organization’s core values. It’s not just about preventing negative headlines—it’s about protecting patient trust and team accountability.
• Investigate issues quickly: Don’t ignore complaints, red flags, or policy violations. Address them quickly and transparently.
• Use social media screening tools: Tools like Fama’s social media screening help you spot risks before hiring by checking public online behavior signals, helping you avoid bringing misconduct risks into your organization in the first place.

A strong code of conduct and social media policy provides employees with a clear framework for behavior, covering everything from workplace ethics to online activity. This clarity is critical. It helps foster a culture of accountability and integrity while minimizing confusion about what’s expected. Combined with consistent enforcement, these policies support a safer, more professional environment for patients, staff, and leadership alike.

Why Social Media Screening Is Essential for Preventing Healthcare Misconduct

Traditional background checks only catch what’s already in the system. But many healthcare misconduct risks like harassment, racial bias, or ethical violations show up online long before they show up in court records.

Here’s what Fama’s 2024 State of Misconduct at Work report found about healthcare hiring:

• 1 in 15 healthcare candidates (6.5%) show online warning signs of misconduct.
• Candidates with flags average 12 problematic posts each.
• Most common risks: sexually inappropriate content, threats or violence, and intolerance.

These are not things you’d find on a resume, in an interview, or through a standard criminal background check.

Real-world examples uncovered through social media screening include:

• A nurse posting mocking photos of NICU babies.
• A doctor publicly selling human body parts on social media.
• A hospital director involved in fraud and conspiracy.

These aren’t rare cases. They show why social media screening isn’t optional. It’s a critical part of protecting patient safety, workforce trust, and healthcare brand reputation.

How Fama’s Social Media Screening Works

Fama’s social media background check solution helps employers mitigate costly misconduct by: 

• Screening over 10,000 public online sources as well as major and emerging social media platforms including Facebook, X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, and more.
• Detecting early warning signs of misconduct before hiring, or as they emerge throughout the employee lifecycle.
• Providing behavior insights in a fair, consistent, and compliant way.
• Helping healthcare organizations fill the gaps left by traditional hiring tools.

By adding social media screening into your hiring and employee screening process, your team can make smarter, safer decisions about who joins your workforce and prevent misconduct risks from walking through the door in the first place.

Trust in healthcare starts before the first appointment. It starts with who gets hired.

Learn more about how Fama can help. Request a demo.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is healthcare misconduct?

Healthcare misconduct is when a healthcare worker behaves in a way that violates legal, ethical, or professional standards, putting patients or research at risk. This includes malpractice, misconduct, unprofessional conduct, and research fraud.

What’s the difference between medical malpractice and medical misconduct?

Malpractice is usually unintentional (a mistake due to negligence). Misconduct is intentional (knowingly doing something wrong for personal gain).

How do medical centers deal with misconduct?

Most follow a process:

1. Complaint filed
2. Investigation by a board or HR
3. Hearing and evidence review
4. Decision—discipline, retraining, or license revocation

What does Fama do to help with healthcare misconduct?

Fama provides AI-powered social media screening solutions. We help healthcare organizations detect risks like misconduct, fraud, or unprofessional behavior before hiring and throughout the employee lifecycle without overreach or monitoring.

Is unprofessional conduct in nursing the same as misconduct?

Not exactly. Unprofessional conduct includes things like HIPAA violations, working impaired, falsifying records, etc. It’s a type of misconduct but specific to nursing’s scope and ethical standards.