The Relationship between Doctor and Patient Should be Platonic

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Majoring in medicine is one of the most intellectually challenging things that I’ve ever been a part of. When faced with task to do a research paper depicting a problem in your major, well because the medical field is so broad so I found a topic that is almost never talked about. “Love and Medicine”, I chose this topic because it deals with physicians being more than “friendly” with their patients as unethical as this may seem it happens almost. The relationship between a patient and a doctor should be extremely platonic; doctors should always know his or her boundaries, display a level of professionalism, and show as much humility in their job as possible.
Physicians should always know their boundaries when it comes to patients. The Committee on Physician Health and Rehabilitation wrote that “Social contacts with patients may blur the professional boundary.” I can see where this can be a problem in the office. For example, if a patient buys their physician an expensive gift it is highly recommended that the physician should decline such gifts. Because one thing could lead to another and whereas the physician might’ve thought that the patient was just trying to be nice. The patient could be thinking something totally different thing. In the medical field it is always said that physicians should never be over familiarity with patients, “familiarity” meaning; considerable acquaintance with or established friendship; intimacy. Maryland Board of Physicians wrote that “For a physician, sexual misconduct includes erotic behavior such as kissing, nudity, and sexual proposition or comment.” Any type of intimacy goes against the relationship between a patient and his or her physician being platonic. With boundary violations everyone lose...

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...rong, but in some cases the patients often throw themselves at the physicians in hopes of building a more intimate relationship. I personally believe that in to crack down on “love in medicine” physicians should always take someone else with them into the examination room, just so nothing gets out of hand, and so there can be a third party to break up any wrong doings on either end . I believe that the focus should be strictly on providing the patient with the best quality of work as possible.

Works Cited

Maryland Board of Physicians- www.mbp.state.md.us/pages/bound_violation.html https.//depts.washington.edu/biotech/topics/physpt.html www.fsmb.org/pdf/GRPOL_SexualBoundaries
Committee on Physician Health and Rehabilitation
Should doctors friend their patients on Facebook- www.KevinMD.com www.medscape.com/viewarticle www.ncbi.nlmm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1495476

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