Doctor Charged with Killing Lover After Violating Ethics Rules

Doctors, like other professionals, have ethical codes guiding their practice. One of them is not to get personally involved with a patient. If a physician has sex with a patient, the punishment is severe and can lead to being charged with a crime.

In New Zealand an unnamed Auckland doctor has been charged with murder after the drug overdose of a lover. The woman doctor charged with killing her lover began to treat him in 2005 as a patient, then a sexual relationship developed. The doctor subsequently started prescribing large doses of various types of pain medications, including morphine, methadone, tramadol and diazepam for his back pain. The patient reportedly died from a toxic combination of these drugs that authorities maintained he had abused. Ethical rules for virtually all of the care professionals state that the professional not become involved in a personal relationship. Some professionals make friends with their patients, but even so this is a gray area and could be used in a situation where an individual may claim that the friendship caused them to do something that was harmful. It opens up the professional to potential litigation. Sexual relationship with a patient or client is particularly of consequence because of the emotional involvement that takes place. Control issues related to this, where the professional uses that to manipulate, are of particular concern in these instances. In California there needs to be two intervening years between the severance of a patient-professional relationship before a personal one can be undertaken. There are, as one writer has observed, numerous cases of treating professionals marrying patients, but this is pointed out as questionable practice and always open to scrutiny by the profession. Irvin D. Yalom in Love’s Executioner describes the wrenching pain of the patient who considers herself in love with a care professional. The book clearly depicts how difficult it is for a patient to sever a relationship that has involved deep personal attachment and when it ends be able to have a relationship with a treating professional that is purely professional and does not have personal involvement. The issues of control and the importance of maintaining the security and welfare of the patient is at the heart of ethical codes.