Xref: utzoo alt.sex:2149 sci.psychology:2244 sci.med:12216 sci.bio:2298 soc.singles:43842
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!xenitec!timk
From: timk@xenitec.uucp (Tim Kuehn)
Newsgroups: alt.sex,sci.psychology,sci.med,sci.bio,soc.singles
Subject: Re: Curbside Diagnoses?
Summary: A defn. of accepting "medical responsibility"
Message-ID: <1989Sep12.160033.235@xenitec.uucp>
Date: 12 Sep 89 16:00:33 GMT
Reply-To: timk@xenitec.UUCP (Tim Kuehn)
Organization: TDK Consulting
Lines: 42

oliver@athena.mit.edu (James D. Oliver III) writes:
>The Boston Globe had an interesting article today concerning the issues
>facing a physician who, on casual observation of a person in an everday
>circumstance, notices a possible pathological physical finding.  

...stuff deleted....

>
>Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing some discussion on the following from
>both physicians and non-physicians.
>

Recently there was a case here in Canada where a semi-retired doctor
was successfully sued $50,000 for not treating a man who had a heart
attack on his front door. The man was complaining of chest pains and his 
wife went across the street to a doctor's house. The doctor's wife explained
that the doctor wasn't doing a full-time practice, and for the man to 
come back in the afternoon. While on the doctor's porch, the man suffered
a heart attack. The doctor came forward and looked, and an ambulance 
called (but did not treat the man). The man was taken to a local hospital
where he later died. 

According to court records, when the doctor walked towards the man, he
"accepted medical responsibility for his care." 

(This information taken from memory after reading the article in the 
KW-Record sometime in the past couple weeks.)

An interesting question is - would this kind of thing apply to the question
here - about whether a doctor should tell a person they see on the street they
may have a illness or not. Would that be construed as "accepting medical 
responsibility", and as such leave the doctor liable if something happens
in the immediate future after the he and the person he's informed ofa 
potential illness have parted ways? 

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