The legal definition of a patient and the corresponding duties of the physician have been debated in state courts for over a century, and many aspects of the question are still unresolved.
Is this a conflict over a team member’s practice style or is it a breach professional boundaries? Is it appropriate for team members to make this judgment, or should it instead come from the team leader?
There are at least two considerations here: the patient’s perception of a physician’s empathic expression and the physician’s level of comfort with expressing empathy and attending to patients’ emotions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(2):111-115. doi:
10.1001/virtualmentor.2015.17.2.ecas1-1502.