Poll: 10% of Doctors Sleep With Clients

Nine percent of doctors responding to a national survey admittedhaving sexual contact with one or more of their patients.

Almost a quarter of the nearly 2,000 doctors who responded saidthey had at least one patient who had been involved with anotherphysician.

Dr. Nanette K. Gartrell of the University of California, SanFrancisco, reported her findings in the August issue of the WesternJournal of Medicine.

"This represents a major abuse of power, and shows that somephysicians, despite 2,000 years of prohibitions regarding suchcontact, choose to place a higher premium on gratifying their ownsexual and emotional needs than on their patients' welfare," shesaid.

She also noted the discrepancy between what doctors admittedabout their own behavior and the higher prevalence of sexual contactbetween their patients and other physicians.

Surveys were sent to 10,000 doctors, Gartrell said, andresponses came from 679 family practitioners, 360 internists, 344obstetrician-gynecologists and 489 surgeons.

Ten percent of the male doctors and 4 percent of the femaledoctors acknowledged having sexual contact with a total of 332patients, Gartrell said. Almost half of the doctors who admitted tosexual contact had it with more than one patient, she added.

Dr. David Orentlicher, secretary to the American MedicalAssociation's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, called thefindings disturbing and said he hopes they will help to wake upphysicians who still deny there is a problem.

Nearly 90 percent of the cases involved a male physician andfemale patient; 6 percent involved a female physician and malepatient. Four percent involved homosexual male contact and 1 percentinvolved lesbian contact.

The trust, dependency and gratitude patients develop for theirdoctors make it difficult for them to decline sexual overtures fromtheir doctors, Gartrell said.

Patients who have sex with doctors feel exploited, depressed andsometimes suicidal, she added. "Tragically, most are unable to trustsubsequent physicians."

Sixty-three percent of the doctors thought thatphysician-patient sexual contact was "always harmful."

The American Medical Association considers sexual contactbetween physicians and current patients as ethical misconduct. TheHippocratic oath, which physicians take before starting theirpractice, forbids such contact.

More than half of the doctors who responded to the survey saidthe issue of sexual contact had never been addressed in theirtraining, while several of the younger doctors expressed gratitudethat the issue had been brought up in school, Gartrell noted.