Should Doctors Take Gifts

The role of doctors, nurses and physicians in general is to help out their patients and make them healthy. The patients pay for their treatment, but some may feel that their payment is not enough or may want to give extra. This exchange of money for service is extremely personal since this service is the provider of their continued health, or at least genuine attempts to do so. Since it is so personal, patients may feel that they are still in debt to their healthcare providers even if proper payment was done. These patients may give their healthcare professional a gift to show their thanks. Should the healthcare professional accept or reject these gifts? Currently, it seems that the decision is up to the healthcare professional’s discretion.

To begin with, some sort of loose definition must be set for the types of gifts that are being discussed. Gifts that would be deemed as just a thanks between a healthcare professional and a patient are also the most common types of gifts (Spence). These are chocolate and liquors, which have low monetary value and cannot be exchanged easily for their face value; meaning, once the healthcare professional receives these gifts they are most likely stuck with them. This is important, because gifts other than money usually have some thought process behind them and requires more effort to go out and acquire them. This would mean that the patient is thinking about the doctor and that their thanks are most likely genuine. There can still be hidden motives behind these ‘genuine’ gifts, but both sides of the argument have to be laid down before it can be further discussed.

If a gift were to be accepted it may taint the rest of the healthcare procedure. As Weijer writes: “The physician-patient relationship is a fiduciary one; that is, the physician owes an obligation of fidelity to the patient” (Weijer). He goes on to say that profiting from outside the established monetary channels that pay for the doctor to do his job interferes