November 21, 2013 13:00 — 1 Comment
Ethics: Doctor Assesses the Terrain of Random Acts of Kindness Toward Patients
When Abigail Zuger, MD, offered an old computer to a longtime patient, she began to ponder the ethics of kindness between doctors and their charges. In an essay for the New York Times’ Well Blog, she writes:
Kindness to friend and duty to patient: Are they one and the same? Or separated by a barbed-wire fence? Opinion is all over the map.
At one extreme is the position probably best articulated by one of medicine’s great clinician-scientists, Dr. Donald Seldin of the University of Texas. In a 1981 talk to an audience of physicians, Dr. Seldin deplored “a tendency to construe all sorts of human problems as medical problems” and thus within doctors’ duty and purview to fix. If it isn’t “relief of pain, prevention of disability and postponement of death,” Dr. Seldin said, why then, doctor, leave it alone! He got a standing ovation. Click here to read the full essay.
Wonderful article, a wake-up call. I still don’t know where is the fine line, we doctors are human first and foremost. I am a retired neurosurgeon, frequently visiting poor countries in Africa, helping the poorest of the poor. Not only treating patients free of charge, but I very often give them financial help, cash pocket money, and food, and every child in the ward, whether my patient or not, gets a chocolate. I have never thought that I am doing something wrong, not to think of unethical, and helping the deserving should be unethical. I have no idea; how can I stop helping people, if they happen to be my patients? I would appreciate the comments of the experts in the field.
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