VIP syndrome: The stress and anxiety when your patient is also a doctor
Doctors as patients often receive special privileges, but this may not always be in their best interests, a report suggests
The doctor–patient relationship: its dynamics have generated the deepest ethical discussion from medicine’s very beginnings.
The complexities can run deeper still when the patient is also a doctor.
There has been one main question — do the dynamics, such as the potential desire of the treating doctor to avoid disapproval from a colleague, mean they receive better or worse care?
A new JAMA Network Open paper claims the risks of poor outcomes are real, specifically when a doctor gives their doctor-patient, consciously or not, status as a VIP.
