AMA VICDOC Autumn 2024 - Magazine - Page 7
REP ORT
GP EXPERIENCES
+ CHALLENGES
OF TREATING
DOCTOR-PATIENTS
—
Claire Hutton (PhD candidate, Department
of General Practice, Monash University),
Dr Chris Barton, Dr Penny Round
In order to function well, doctors need to look after themselves.
Indeed, medical boards recommend that doctors have their own
(independent) general practitioner (GP), but many do not. Doctors
also often delay seeking medical care for themselves, for a range
of reasons, including discomfort about the role reversal such a
step requires. Guidelines consistently state that doctor-patients
should be treated like any other patient, but this appears to be
difficult to put into practice.
Once doctors do seek medical care, there is some evidence
that the treating doctor can struggle to provide optimal
treatment. Treating doctors often experience anxiety about errors
and the likely scrutiny from the medical, and wider community.
They can also make assumptions about the doctor-patient’s level
of knowledge, and they are at times influenced by strong medical
cultural beliefs about doctors’ invulnerability to illness.
Many, if not most, doctors will at some point find themselves
treating fellow doctors. Doctor-patients will of course need and
present at all levels of care. We have chosen to focus on general
practitioners for this qualitative study, as this is the entry point
to the medical system in Australia.
The aim of this study is to develop a theoretical and conceptual
model that makes sense of Australian GPs’ experiences and
challenges and approaches to care for a patient that is a fellow
medical doctor. We will explore how GPs feel about seeing doctorpatients, and what they like and/or find challenging about this.
We will also look at whether GPs believe they treat doctor-patients
differently to other patients and if so, in what ways and for what
reasons, and what this means for provision of care.
The findings from this study will inform the development of a
questionnaire to be disseminated to GPs across Australia to test
the model that is suggested by this qualitative work and whether
it can be generalised to primary care doctors broadly. Developing
a clearer understanding about the challenges in seeing doctorpatients, may assist in helping doctors to become more at ease
and effective in caring for their own.
We plan to interview 15-25 GPs who have some (even if minimal)
experience with treating fellow doctors. Interviews are semistructured, audio-recorded and will take 45-60 minutes.
What's
On
—
Feb '23
Tinnitus Australia
Red Feb Heart research
FebFast
Heart Kids –
International Childhood
Heart Disease (CHD)
Awareness Day
Ovarian Cancer
Awareness month
Click here to participate,
either face-to-face or by Zoom
VI CD O C SU M M ER 2022
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