Saturday, December 08, 2007

Different duty of care for psychiatrists and internists

A member of iMedExchange posted about this article:
A general practitioner who slept with a patient's wife -- who was also a patient -- can't be sued for malpractice in Pennsylvania, a three-judge panel concluded, affirming a decision issued by the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas last year in Long v. Ostroff. Sexual misconduct "may be unethical," the court noted, but state law doesn't recognize such a claim for professional negligence because a general practitioner's duty of care doesn't prohibit that behavior. Unlike psychiatrists, who have a "special duty" to refrain from engaging in sexual relations with a patient's spouse, general practitioners don't have such a duty, Senior Judge Justin M. Johnson explained.
I wonder which standard would apply to me. I am boarded in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry. I primarily practice sleep medicine, which is a subspecialty of both internal medicine and psychiatry. Most insurance plans don't recognize sleep medicine as a specialty, and some list me as internal medicine and some as psychiatry. I took the old sleep boards as well as the new sleep boards (results pending) as an internist. As much as the legal process fascinates me, I guess I better not try to become the subject of a Supreme Court case.

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