Inviting Patients to Read Their Doctors' Notes: Patients and Doctors Look Ahead

Inviting patients to read their doctors' notes: patients and doctors look ahead: patient and physician surveys.

BACKGROUND Little is known about what primary care physicians (PCPs) and patients would expect if patients were invited to read their doctors' office notes. OBJECTIVE To explore attitudes toward potential benefits or harms if PCPs offered patients ready access to visit notes. DESIGN The PCPs and patients completed surveys before joining a voluntary program that provided electronic links to ...

Inviting patients to read their doctors' notes: a quasi-experimental study and a look ahead.

BACKGROUND Little information exists about what primary care physicians (PCPs) and patients experience if patients are invited to read their doctors' office notes. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect on doctors and patients of facilitating patient access to visit notes over secure Internet portals. DESIGN Quasi-experimental trial of PCPs and patient volunteers in a year-long program that provi...

Patients and Their Doctors

Must doctors save their patients?

Do doctors and other medical staff have an obligation to treat those who need their help? This paper assumes no legal or contractual obligations but attempts to discover whether there is any general moral obligation to treat those in need. In particular the questions of whether or not the obligation that falls on medical staff is different from that of others and of whether doctors are more bla...

What doctors should call their patients.

The paper discusses the moral difficulties physicians encounter when determining the level of formality they will use when addressing their patients. It is argued that physicians ought not to use a patient's first name unless the patient also uses the physician's first name. In short, physicians and patients should always address each other with the same level of formality. It is argued that th...