Skip to content
Surprising Science —

Asking Your Physician Friends For Medical Advice Can Cross an Ethical Line

If you’ve got a friend or family member who practices medicine, asking them for advice can feel like an easy alternative to visiting a doctor. But sometimes those requests for help cross a line that doctors aren’t keen to approach. 

As The Atlantic’s Bouree Lam writes, visiting the doctor’s office for a less-than-serious problem is an incredibly unappealing prospect. Beyond long wait times and exposure to legitimately sick people, it can also be quite expensive if you’re uninsured or have a high co-pay. For many people, services like WebMD save them the hassle. For others who have friends or family in the medical profession, a quick call or text substitutes a web search. Yet, while most doctors are okay with simply letting you know that you probably don’t have chicken pox, doling out more in-depth medical advice leads down a rather slipper slope:

“The problem is that asking for medical advice isn’t exactly like asking your astrophysicist friend to explain string theory to you. Doctors face ethical dilemmas when they are asked to treat, or further write prescriptions, for their friends or family.”

As Lam notes, the American Medical Association recommends that doctors do not treat family and friends when it’s not an emergency. This is a stance held by many in the profession. Despite this, surveys of doctors consistently reveal that most of them have treated or prescribed medicine to someone close to them. Sometimes this is because the doctor feels qualified or that the situation was without risk. Other times, it’s because they gave into pressure:

“This is the topic of a recent New England Journal of Medicine essay by a group of doctors looking at the challenges M.D.s face when asked to discuss illness, refill a prescription, or even perform surgery for a friend or family member. The essay says that there are complicated ethical issues involvedin treating friends and family, as anxiety and emotional investment can result in bad medical judgment. Additionally, a friend or family member is less likely to sue for malpractice, which could meddle with how doctors think about risk.”

Lam mentions that doctors aren’t necessarily alone in having their special talents in demand among their personal circles. Friends and family are always asking for legal advice from lawyers, free headshots from photographers, and pro bono proofreading from editors, to name only a few examples. What separates medical professionals from the rest is the life-and-death balance they play with, as well as issues of liability and risk.

Take a look at Lam’s article (linked again below) and let us know what your experiences are with this topic.

Read more at The Atlantic

Photo credit: Ljupco Smokovski / Shutterstock

Related
Up Next
Culture & Religion
How Prison Changed Egon Schiele’s Portraits for Better or Worse
“Bürgerschreck!” rang the accusations in German at Austrian painter Egon Schiele in April 1912. This “shocker of the bourgeois” found his home rifled by local constables searching for evidence of the immorality locals suspected of a man who lived with a woman not his wife and invited local children to pose for him. The constables brought over one hundred drawings as well as Schiele himself to the local jail, where he sat for 24 days until a court trial during which the judge flamboyantly burned one of Schiele’s “pornographic” portraits in front of the chastised artist before releasing him. That experience changed the rest of Schiele’s life and art. Egon Schiele: Portraits at the Neue Galerie in New York City centers on this turning point in Schiele’s portraits, which remain some of the most psychologically penetrating and sexual explicit portraits of the modern age. Schiele’s capacity to shock today’s audience may have declined as modern mores finally catch up to him, but the power of his portraits to captivate through their unconventionality, sensitivity, and empathy never gets old.