How does Marc negotiate his responsibilities for Ralph from an ethical standpoint? Should doctors have a personal relationship with their patients?

As the family doctor, Marc is responsible for Ralph Meier's physical well-being and must make choices on his behalf. This becomes increasingly difficult when tension rises in their friendship. How does Marc negotiate this from an ethical standpoint? Should doctors have a personal relationship with their patients?

Marc has no ethics. He is an indifferent doctor. Marc is unable to separate his personal and professional lives. Doctors should be able to separate his two lives. Which is why Ralph is dead.

I agree with robinn .... not a problem for him because he doesn't seem to have the necessary ethical background to be a doctor in the first place. I am conflicted about being friends with my doctors. Years ago I lived in a small town and it was almost impossible NOT to be friends with your doctors. I drew the line at my gynecologist ... just felt weird to have one of my best friends visiting with me on that end in the doctor's office! I was always careful not to bring up medical questions to them outside the office when we were at events together.

Marc doesn't behave professionally but I have a hard time thinking that he ever does. Before Julie's assault, Marc is in different and lax. After the incident he is obsessed with revenge.

Marc seems to think medical credentials are a way of making money with little effort and ethics was not part of his being. He was all about himself alone and really did not have a scrap of empathy in him. He felt no responsibility for Ralph or obviously even his daughter. He wanted to hush the whole business with Julia up so as not to have it reflect badly on him and take his own revenge on Ralph then skip the country and try using same daughter as a moneymaking machine. Total Jerk.

Marc seems to have no real concern for any of his patients, they are just a source of income to him. I don't think that he and Ralph were ever really friends. In general, personal relationships are not a good idea between doctors and patients, and may be unethical. Marc did not seem to feel responsible for his patients' well-being at all.

It has to be tough for a doctor to have a personal relationship with a patient. I don't think it is unacceptable but some lines can get blurred. I also don't know that you would consider Marc and Ralph friends. They were merely acquaintances before the summer vacation and Marc was only interested in being at the summer house to be near Judith. Marc seemed to loath Ralph, but Ralph assumed they were friends. What Marc did to Ralph is totally unacceptable whether he knew without a doubt that Ralph raped his daughter or not.

The ethics of the medical profession, as for any profession, are a set of rules imposed upon the profession's practitioners that are intended to preserve and perpetuate the delivery of the highest standard of service to the community. While there are public and private processes for the enforcement of ethical standards the individual's adherence to the ethical oath will ultimately turn on his commitment to the values and ideals of the profession.

And there we have the disconnect between Marc and the practice of medicine. Marc's attitude toward humanity in general, and his patients in particular, was so jaded, so warped, so disrespectful, that he was incapable of being a healer. And when you layer on to Marc's standard disregard for his patients his special animus for Ralph, the stage is set for murder.

There was no "negotiation" between Marc and his ethical oath in his approach toward Ralph. For Marc, his medical calling and the trust that Raph placed in Marc for his well being merely made it easier for Marc to carry out the dirty deed. While the act was perpetrated by a doctor in an exam room, the mindset of the killer was no different than it would have been for a triggerman in a back alley.

As for whether physicians should treat friends I believe that as a general proposition, probably not (particularly for the primary care physician). Professional distance is important in the doctor/ patient relationship. A prior personal relationship will inevitably affect the way information and counsel is given and received and the expectations that each participant has of the other.