For as much as it might seem okay for as much as it happens in prime time TV medical dramas or daytime soap operas, there doesn’t seem to be a medical board out there or the American Medical Association, for that matter, that thinks it’s okay for doctors to have a romantic relationship with patients. Even when it’s consensual between two adults. Not while there is a physician-patient relationship that is ongoing.
It may be okay to have a round of golf or have a drink with someone at a bar, but if you want to date or have a sexual relationship–that’s right out.
But Chris Rangel, MD of RangelMD.com seems to have a problem with this view. He disagrees with the Texas Medical Board’s recent decision to fine a doctor $10,000 and to have him do 10 WHOLE hours of ethics education over two years (how ever will he find the time to do that??) after engaging in a romantic relationship with one of his patients. His reason? It’s simply too excessive.
If this physician had just terminated his physician-patient relationship prior to having a romantic one, the problem could have been solved, as was pointed out at the New York Times Tara Parker-Pope blog and by Rangel himself. I agree.
You can’t control who you fall in love with or even who you want to date, but you can put on the speed breaks long enough to say, “Hey, please find another doctor before we take this any further.” Particularly in this case, when the physician in question is a family practitioner, not an orthopedic surgeon or a specialist, but a dime-a-dozen family practice doc. How hard would it have been, one has to ask, for this physician to have given his patient a referral prior to engaging in a sexual relationship with her and avoided entirely this ethical misstep? Had he been the only hematologist in town and she had anemia, the ethical violation would have been of a totally different kind–but in this case, this physician simply didn’t bother to ask her to find a different primary care doctor.
Ultimately, he will take his ethics courses and pay his fine and go on with his practice. But hopefully, other physicians will learn from his mistake. Yes, you can fall in love with a patient as they do on primetime TV, but before you take the plunge, give them a referral first.
Summer Johnson, PhD