One day just as a man walked out of my office, a general practitioner walked in,coming to consult me for her daughter's issues. She noted the man who had just walked out, and asked me in a hushed tone as to how I was connected to that man. Making an exception to the professional confidentiality clause, I told her that he was the son of one of my patients. She sighed and narrated an experience she had with this man, a young autorickshaw driver. A few months prior to this visit of hers to my office, that young man, she said, had started dropping by in her clinic every few days complaining of a marriage not consummated. Maintaining her professional courtesy this colleague had heard the man the first time but had firmly asked that he bring along his wife thereafter. Seeing that he had not followed her instructions she was forced to be rude to him and warned him of the possibility of reporting him to the police for indecent behaviour. At this point I told this colleague that as far as I knew of that man, he was unmarried. I could see disgust on her face for that man as she left my office.
Our media has sensitized our population to professionals' misconduct while on duty. Incidents galore about how, for example, a doctor misbehaved with a patient not accompanied by anybody. This write up is not to challenge the existence of that unpleasant and murky reality. The media has, however, not delved in any depths into this phenomenon where a person resorts to acting out his or her perversions on a solitary professional when on duty. The only movie that comes to mind which shows this in a gut wrenching manner is Patch Adams, a beautiful movie with a heart-breaking end.
This giving vent to extreme perversion is perhaps not as common as is another phenomenon where a patient is found to be seeking the pleasure of a professional's company under the pretext of what the person thinks is a genuine health issue but which to the medical eye is a thinly veiled excuse. Each medical speciality has such 'smart' patient populations who know which disease- incurable in a special way- to take recourse to for a few minutes company of the doctor of the opposite gender.
Readers of the female gender would perhaps think that only the fairer sex gets its share of undue attention from male deviants. Not true. The converse is equally true!
Before I go into the details of how the medical professional gets mired by these company seekers, there is a little necessary deviation. This set of pleasure and company seeking patients are not going to be reported as easily as, say cases of cerebral malaria. They give a recurring income to the medical professional, howsoever much they may not like the manner in which the money flows in. Additionally there is the security (sic) that they are relatively low risk candidates, not requiring any great intellectual input or medical detective work. It is, thus, easy money for the doctor. But anything that is too easy also has a very difficult aspect to it. This is also the reason that this issue has not reached the mass media so far.( The reporting of such issues is documented in mainstream medical journals, however.)
Many years back, when I was his junior, I was taken aback when this senior orthopedic surgeon told me that a patient we were being jointly consulted by was never going to get well, "She is a widow", he had said. He continued, " they are bound to suffer". That was too much to bear for me and I had excused myself, my mind raging with thoughts of somehow putting some sense into the senior's head. I now know that the senior had meant something I had not perceived then. He was pointing to the phenomenon I have just mentioned: Undue Consultations.
The length of these undue consultations range from a short one-session talk for reassuring oneself (the patient) to a long series of consultations with one or more specialists of the opposite gender! The nature of talk ranges from mildly personal ( to test waters) to deeply personal and of the nature threatening the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. The more impersonal the doctor remains the safer the patient feels in opening up with secrets that have nothing to do with their complaints. The more a doctor tries to be courteous and empathetic, the more emotional comfort the patient demands from him or her. The emotional demands are outside the scope of a doctor-patient relationship.Ultimately such patients end up being an albatross around the doctor's neck. The doctor feels that they are a drain on his precious time and ultimately a sensible doctor has to bring the patient to his or her senses. Those doctors that don't do this sometimes end up making headlines on page three.
A famous aphorism taught to medical students goes this way:
Always get emotionally involved in the patient's problems (i.e. their care) but don't get emotionally involved with the patients themselves! How true!
I invite my doctor-friends' comments on this issue.Non-doctor friends are also welcome to comment.
Our media has sensitized our population to professionals' misconduct while on duty. Incidents galore about how, for example, a doctor misbehaved with a patient not accompanied by anybody. This write up is not to challenge the existence of that unpleasant and murky reality. The media has, however, not delved in any depths into this phenomenon where a person resorts to acting out his or her perversions on a solitary professional when on duty. The only movie that comes to mind which shows this in a gut wrenching manner is Patch Adams, a beautiful movie with a heart-breaking end.
This giving vent to extreme perversion is perhaps not as common as is another phenomenon where a patient is found to be seeking the pleasure of a professional's company under the pretext of what the person thinks is a genuine health issue but which to the medical eye is a thinly veiled excuse. Each medical speciality has such 'smart' patient populations who know which disease- incurable in a special way- to take recourse to for a few minutes company of the doctor of the opposite gender.
Readers of the female gender would perhaps think that only the fairer sex gets its share of undue attention from male deviants. Not true. The converse is equally true!
Before I go into the details of how the medical professional gets mired by these company seekers, there is a little necessary deviation. This set of pleasure and company seeking patients are not going to be reported as easily as, say cases of cerebral malaria. They give a recurring income to the medical professional, howsoever much they may not like the manner in which the money flows in. Additionally there is the security (sic) that they are relatively low risk candidates, not requiring any great intellectual input or medical detective work. It is, thus, easy money for the doctor. But anything that is too easy also has a very difficult aspect to it. This is also the reason that this issue has not reached the mass media so far.( The reporting of such issues is documented in mainstream medical journals, however.)
Many years back, when I was his junior, I was taken aback when this senior orthopedic surgeon told me that a patient we were being jointly consulted by was never going to get well, "She is a widow", he had said. He continued, " they are bound to suffer". That was too much to bear for me and I had excused myself, my mind raging with thoughts of somehow putting some sense into the senior's head. I now know that the senior had meant something I had not perceived then. He was pointing to the phenomenon I have just mentioned: Undue Consultations.
The length of these undue consultations range from a short one-session talk for reassuring oneself (the patient) to a long series of consultations with one or more specialists of the opposite gender! The nature of talk ranges from mildly personal ( to test waters) to deeply personal and of the nature threatening the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. The more impersonal the doctor remains the safer the patient feels in opening up with secrets that have nothing to do with their complaints. The more a doctor tries to be courteous and empathetic, the more emotional comfort the patient demands from him or her. The emotional demands are outside the scope of a doctor-patient relationship.Ultimately such patients end up being an albatross around the doctor's neck. The doctor feels that they are a drain on his precious time and ultimately a sensible doctor has to bring the patient to his or her senses. Those doctors that don't do this sometimes end up making headlines on page three.
A famous aphorism taught to medical students goes this way:
Always get emotionally involved in the patient's problems (i.e. their care) but don't get emotionally involved with the patients themselves! How true!
I invite my doctor-friends' comments on this issue.Non-doctor friends are also welcome to comment.
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