Physicians should find a way to balance their responsibility to care for individual patients with their desire to serve as public policy advocates so that they do not become overwhelmed in handling both roles.
Argues that non-adherence on a patient's part does not erase physician responsibility and examines how best to provide care for a non-adherent patient.
Although a patient who is an excessive activist can be difficult to treat, physicians should not let a patient's unfounded sense of doom allow unnecessary tests and medications.
Physicians need to exhaust every possible alternative to bring about political changes before resorting to breaking the law as an act of civil disobedience.
Physicians need to exhaust every possible alternative to bring about political changes before resorting to breaking the law as an act of civil disobedience.
Physicians need to perform their due diligence and practice caution when prescribing addictive pain medications to relieve their patients' chronic pain due to increased federal monitoring of pain prescriptions.