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COPYRIGHT 2007 International Medical News Group
Dr. Anthony L. Suchman was the on-call resident running the medicine side of a hospital emergency department one night when the wife of one of his good friends walked in complaining of abdominal pain.
She required a pelvic exam as part of a proper work-up. Despite feeling ill at ease, he proceeded with the exam.
"It was awkward for both of us given that we were friends and knew each other in that social context," recalled Dr. Suchman, an internist in Rochester, N.Y. "We both knew that exam had to be done. But there was also the sense of being responsible for my friend's wife. If I didn't know her, I wouldn't have had any trouble going through the work-up and making a determination of what was going on. But there was this extra level of responsibility, or fear of regret, or fear of who knows what because we were friends."
It's a tricky business having friends as patients. Dr. Suchman likens it to other dual roles one assumes in life. In providing medical care to friends, "I take extra care to make sure I'm doing everything I would do as a physician who did not know the person and not back away from anything. It's the same thing you do when you have a doctor for a patient."
He explained that this extra sense of vigilance is needed because of the tendency to view friends in a positive light. "There might be certain things about them that they wouldn't...
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