Friendly Doctors Find It Harder To Be Honest With Patients They Like

Being a nice doctor and being a good one might be two separate things, according to a new study . Published in The Lancet Oncology, the study found that doctors who
are young, friendly, and naïve might not be as good at carrying out objective, truthful decisions — particularly to patients they like.



About half of the doctors in the study had given patients their personal cell phone numbers, and about 14 percent had accepted patients as friends on Facebook. “The difficulty, if you hug and kiss patients, if you allow them to call you by your first name, is that quickly the relationship can become confused as a social one rather than a professional one,” Fallowfield said. “Doctors become confused, ‘I really like this person, how can I bear to tell them that they’re going to die?’ They find it more difficult to be objective.”

So the question is:
Is complete honesty always the best option?
Should relatives guide the appropriate course of action?
Can other techniques be employed?



Ref: medical daily.com, journals.rcni.com