Particularly in a small community, patients may want to avoid the social stigma of seeking mental health care by receiving it from their primary care physician—who may know them well enough to have some insights an unfamiliar specialist would not.
Whether a physician fancies herself a member of the Green Party or the Tea Party, he or she must obey our government’s rules in her advocacy for that cause and be extremely diligent in those increasingly rare instances when she feels herself compelled not to do so.
The guidelines for patients’ eligibility for bariatric surgery have not changed since 1991, although recent data suggest there may be indications for broadening application of the surgery.
Writing a case study of a psychiatric patient may change the patient-physician dynamic even if the patient consents to be written about. And when the patient is a minor and consent must involve her parents, the process becomes even more complicated.