I’m sure you’ve seen them on medical blogs: Disclaimers that remind readers to call 911 in the event of emergency.
But is someone choking on a hot dog really going to dial up KevinMD or SeattleMamaDoc for help? Does anyone really believe that 33 charts is the place to deal with your acute airway obstruction when you have a just a couple of minutes to live?
Here’s my theory: I suspect that the first attorney who came up with the 911 disclaimer did so as some sort of perverse joke. And rather than seek the input of their own lawyers, all those who followed simply copied the this original language believing it to be judicious and most conservative. Now it’s the longest running gag in legal history.
I’ve yet to hear of a doctor forced to pay damages over the misunderstanding that their blog was the sole source of therapeutic direction in an individual patient’s maligned care. Perhaps it’s that viral 911 disclaimer keeping us safe.
Long before the internet I wrote for magazines like American Baby and Parenting. There were no sidebars reminding the parent-in-crisis of the three number sequence that should be used in place of the magazine’s advice. That would have been insulting.
Those initiating the 911 disclaimer should step forward and claim place in history. We’ve all had a good laugh.
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Patient natural selection
I can neither confirm nor deny that.
What about issues like trying to dissuade patients from hounding you for medical advice online or construing a comment or a post as medical advice in some non-emergency case, and then make it an issue for a suit?
I don’t know of any doctors hounded for medical advice. Perhaps I just haven’t met them. Either way, disclaimers and statements claifying your lack of availability for an online clinical relationship are reasonable and smart. It’s the 911 disclaimer that’s just plain goofy.
I’m with you, Bryan. I can’t imagine anyone is tuning into my blog in a moment of desperation….but I don’t think the lawyers are backing down anytime soon either. Everything about physicians expressing opinion online makes the lawyers (and most docs, themselves) nervous. Medicine is a risk-averse culture. So sharing freely online on a blog– publicly– like we do with our patients behind closed doors every day–seems to make every one squirm.
Until I read this post, I’d never spent any time noting that the disclaimer on my blog mentions 911, too. Wow.
The general public is much smarter than we give them credit for. The things we worry about in health care vis-a-vis interaction with patients (who happen to be people, most of whom manage to understand the difference between online and offline relationships and how to get the help they need appropriately) are borderline insulting – to us and to the public.
I have NEVER heard of any health care professional have a major ‘life threatening’ interaction online. Nor have I heard any story of people seeking specific health care information from their provider in an open forum setting (such as a blog or social media), yet we fear all of this as if a lawsuit is just waiting around the corner.
I’ll worry about this if and when a real problem arises. Until then, I’ll blog and tweet away (keeping in mind confidentiality and ethics, of course).