Friday, January 22, 2010

Things Some Patients Ask For

Today I got the most inappropriate (read: unethical) request from an ex-patient of mine which really pissed me off. I saw her 4 months ago for something, and had dismissed him back to her GP.
Apparently, this girl who's in pre-law school, skipped out on some exams last month. And she's on the verge of getting kicked out. So now, she's wanting me to write her lecturers a letter that she was at my clinic for a medical appointment and that was why she wasn't at her exam. Except she wasn't. The last time I saw her was months ago.
Oh, the words that I so wanted to tell her (but can't). We politely told her no.
If she's already willing to be so dishonest in pre-law, who knows what she'd do as a lawyer.

Reminds me of some other incidents too. Like the guy who wanted to take his side in a lawsuit against another doctor, claiming that a medication caused him to have permanent diabetes. For one, he admitted taking that medication at much higher doses than was prescribed, and secondly, it was his genes and his BMI of 45, not the pills he took for a week, that did it.

Or that one time when I was a senior resident, when a patient threatened to kill himself and make his daughter an orphan if I didn't give him another Oxycontin prescription.
Thankfully 99.9% of our patients are not out there to take advantage of you.