Power and control: contracts and the patient-physician relationship.

The definition of a contract according to the Oxford English Dictionary is a ‘mutual agreement between two or more parties that something shall be done’. Patient contracts stray far from this definition and serve many other purposes beyond agreement over a course of action. As shown in Table 1, the intent of contracts varies by clinical situation (10). Nonetheless, they share one common feature: they are created by physicians and signed by patients.