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Medical Doctor Pushes Political Agenda with Patients
If this story is true, it’s a disgusting abuse of power by a doctor, and worse yet—he’s a Republican. A doctor in Lakeland, FL, apparently makes a practice prior to important elections of promoting Republican candidates. A patient of his, who was receiving injections for chronic pain, described the exchange in this way:
The patient lay on an examination table, semi-clothed and crying, after having just received excruciating injections to help relieve her chronic pain.
At that point, she says, Dr. Tom Porter approached her and asked if she was registered to vote. Though stunned by the unexpected question, she said she was.
‘Republican, I hope,’ Porter responded.
I just looked at him and, I said, ‘That’s personal,’ the patient recalled. ‘So he was like, ‘Well, I hope so,’ and he kind of elaborated a bit about, ‘Democrats are doing nothing but destroying this country,’ and ‘They’re going to destroy our economy, and it’s finally getting better with all the Republicans in office’ . . . and he handed me a piece of paper with everyone he recommended circled on there and told me to take that with me and use it to vote.’
This is reprehensible on so many levels. It is an abuse of power. A doctor should not be engaging in political discourse with a patient, unless discussion is initiated by the patient. When the patient commented about his behavior with his staff, they confirmed, “During the whole election season, he goes crazy every single time.”
When the newspaper inquired with the Florida Board of Medicine, a division of the Florida Department of Health, they responded by email, “This behavior would not violate any of the laws or rules regulating the practice of medicine.”
In contrast, Celia B. Fisher, an expert on medical ethics at Fordham University in New York said his actions were not acceptable:
Fisher, the Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics, said the actions violate ethical norms in multiple ways. She said using appointment time for political advocacy constitutes a ‘boundary violation,’ in which the doctor misuses his role.
Fisher said politicking during appointments could also be considered a conflict of interest, coercion of patients and exercise of undue influence. She noted that a patient is a ‘captive audience’ in the doctor’s office.
Another patient of the doctor’s had a similar experience. He gave her an “information packet, of 10- or 15- page collection of essays expressing his opinions on political issues.”
I know that other people in positions of power promote politics: rabbis, priests, and teachers are known to include political statements in their rhetoric; these actions are also inappropriate and an abuse of power. But a medical doctor speaking politics with a patient in his office—it’s simply unacceptable.
And a Republican, no less.
Published in Politics
No. I put it under the category of consumer comfort. A medical practitioner is a service provider who like any provider can make the consumer more or less happy with the encounter. This clearly has risks of making a patient uncomfortable at a consumer level, not an ethical level. The ethicist has an agenda. It would be interesting to inquire of the ethicist which of the various forms of social proselytizing would cross an ethical boundary. I suspect that promoting planned parenthood might not, but talking to someone about the superiority of abstinence over other forms of birth control would (in the ethicist’s view). [Recall the old joke about an aspirin held between the knees being the best birth control pill.]
I don’t think that the doctor’s conduct was unethical, and I don’t think that it should be sanctioned.
I do think that it is rude and inappropriate. It is very easy to handle. If the doctor really pushed too far — and for me, the worksheet about how to vote would have been too far — I would simply say, I’m here for medical advice, not political advice. Stick to your job, doc. And then I might just find myself another doc.
I would never trust an ethicist about anything. The main reason you hire ethicists is to give you cover if your organization wants to do something really shoddy.
Very funny, @henryracette! ;-) Somehow it seems people have assumed he was a dentist. He was some other type who gave injections to people with chronic pain (and probably other duties).
You have two women claiming this. We’re there any nurses or assistants who witnessed either woman’s conversation with the doctor?
The women claim, when obliquely asked, people on staff confirmed the Dr. gets nutty like this around elections. I’m also skeptical the unnamed staff confirmed any such thing.
The story has a crybullying sound to it.
Maybe. Then again, when the newspaper asked the doctor to comment on the story, he wouldn’t.
Agree entirely. When you are taking care of patients, there is no room for politics.
I smile and keep my mouth shut every time I run into an anti-vax idiot. (Which is about once a day, sadly.)
Pretty much exactly what I was thinking @phenry. My Doc is a long time personal friend. We talk politics all the time. We also agree on most issues. If my doctor was a crazy leftist that bombarded me with his viewpoints, I would find another doctor. And that is exactly what the lady in Susan’s post should do. This is not as much about ethics as it is business practices. In any business if you talk politics you risk alienating some clientele. That doesn’t mean, as the business owner, you have some ethical duty to remain silent.
Maybe the Dr. wouldn’t comment because, while conversation about politics occurred, he didn’t behave the way the women described, perhaps didn’t even initiate the talk on that subject, and can’t prove it.
I wonder if people would respond differently if the doctor was a Democrat. Just sayin’ . . .
I think it was unethical and should be sanctioned for the very reason you mentioned. If a fast food worker can be fired for being “rude and unethical”, a doctor should at a minimum get a slap on the wrist.
And if he continues? We can talk about that license to practice . . .
Well, having gone through it on more than one occasion, no, my response would not change. Teachers pull this crap all the time; all four of my children had to suffer through it (and that was Catholic school). More than one doctor has done it to me. You wouldn’t believe the crap my USMC sons have to sit through.
I’ve never complained to anyone, though I did have some very contentious meetings with teachers.
So sorry … not sorry that this patient was made to feel “uncomfortable”.
I would respond differently if they were government employees, which they are becoming, slowly but surely.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Most Democrats expect everyone else to be a leftist prog as well. They are always talking politics even when I try to avoid it. I stick by my position. He has every right to talk and his patients have every right to leave. The situations you described were merely examinations. It didn’t seem that the doctor was in the middle of some scary procedure where stress could be medically damaging. What are the politics of these women? That might have some effect on their reaction to him.
Finding out if your patient admits to being a Democrat could just be a clever way of screening for possible dementia.
This only shows a reluctance to talk to the press.
And in the current political climate, it ain’t a bad idea.
Uh… my point is that we have responded differently when the doctor was a Democrat.
And that the left would tell us to deal with it. So would some people here.
and visa versa! If you doctor is a Democrat, do you trust his judgement?
@annefy, my comment to you is that you thought these things were wrong. I agree. I understand your choices not to complain because it would have created a lot of problems. But do you think it was right or wrong?
It occurred to me that we might not all be working from the same definition of ethical, so I picked three definitions from different sources:
involving or expressing moral approval or disapproval
conforming to accepted standards of conduct
being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession
I wonder if the responses to my inquiry would have been the same 10 or 15 years ago. Have we progressed in our view of ethics? Have we compromised because of the current social environment?
Or, as some of you say, it doesn’t rise to the level of an ethical concern?
Aside from the ethicist, is there such a thing as ethics?
If you read the article, you’d see that she was receiving painful injections because she suffered from chronic pain. It seems to me that is relevant here. And yes, she could choose to find a new doctor, which is difficult to do in her plan. But even then, should she have had to put up with his drivel?
I quite frankly don’t care what the Left would say. I’m asking people at Ricochet.
I get that. I really do.
And I can say I disapprove of what he did.
But I’m not jumping on that bandwagon that selectively penalizes people for doing the same exact thing that others do without censure or punishment.
Your OP’s outrage at what he did seems to indicate you find what he did egregious enough that he needs to be punished for it.
But that is accepting a different standard of behavior than what is in play, and you are doing it to one of our own.
If you know the guy, tell him you think his behavior was inappropriate and he shouldn’t do it. But he should not be facing down an ethics violation for this when others have not.
Put me down as passionately indifferent. I thought it was rude, but at an eye rolling level; certainly not at an offended level. And I certainly didn’t go running to some “ethicist” or to the press about it. If I did that every time I thought someone was eye-rollingly rude, that’s all I would be doing.
I know exactly what this woman has suffered, and I roll my eyes.
Believe it or not, I wasn’t thinking about punishment. I guess I wanted him called out and if there is such a thing, possibly sanctioned. Whether he is one of our own is irrelevant to me. I would call out anyone who did this; no one gets a free pass in my book. And just because the Left in society would say get over it, it doesn’t mean I should.
BTW, Stina, I hope you know how much I appreciate your comments–truly! I’m not at all upset–just passionate! I think almost everyone has been thoughtful and the most important thing to me is to have an intelligent conversation about this situation–and it’s been great. Please don’t stop!
At the time I had my experience, my gynecologist thought I had cervical cancer and did several biopsies. (I believe I suffered three before she finally admitted no, I did not have cancer. And that my self diagnosis of early menopause was correct.) In addition, I was 75% bald and I had to suffer 50 injections every single week into my bald head. And if I remember, I went through a couple of biopsies for that.
If my daughter complained to me about an experience like the women in OP went through, I would roll my eyes. Then we would laugh about it and trade gyno stories.
I got all my hair back, so lets hear it for modern medicine, regardless of the political leanings of the doctor.
Pardon the multiple responses, but I didn’t address the “I understand your choices not to complain because it would have created a lot of problems.” Certainly not why I chose not to complain. Two comments:
Much of medical laws have been politicized. And many here are approving, and have been approving in the past, as their right to their faith means that women can die through no fault of their own.
Currently the pain med situation is cross wired with religious ideas. I had the perfect regimen of pain meds – 60 vicodin every 100 days. This met with total disapproval from Adventist doctors, who feel that pain meds are damaging spiritually and from a physical stand point. So I had to go without pain relief while I tracked down a new doctor who would allow me my meds.
Luckily the health ailment causing my need for such has been remedied. I am without pain and without a need for those meds.
When I see a doctor, I expect professional expertise and not lectures about religion.
Not necessarily. That very much depends on what kind of political statement they’re making, and how, and in what context, etc.
As an example, issues of gender and sexuality have become very political in the past several years. A lot of what’s being pushed politically directly contradicts what some religious leaders are duty-bound to teach.