The physician's disease: the impact of medical knowledge on personal illness

When physicians confront a personal illness of a serious nature, they may discover that the transition to the sick role is challenging, and the inability to relinquish their stethoscope may cause undo anxiety. The physician-patient relationship is intrinsically asymmetrical, and the role of the physician is to regulate the amount of information patients need in order to become educated about their illness and to make informed decisions about their treatment plan. This article explores the challenges in the physician-patient relationship when the patient is also a physician.

This article is a literature review of publications involving the unique challenges physician-patients experience when suffering from serious personal illness.

The medical knowledge physician-patients harbor has the potential to complicate their ability to cope with difficult or terminal diagnoses. Paradoxically, knowledge about a condition may fuel anxiety instead of alleviating the fear associated with the unknown. Medical knowledge therefore may entail a certain loss of innocence, and physicians are often unable to revert to being "mere" patients. Furthermore, managing this anxiety in physician-patients may prove to be challenging to the treating physician.

From a medical perspective, physician-patients need to be addressed like any other patient. Psychologically, however, these patients are unique, and the specific challenges their education and experience bring into the consultation room needs to be explicitly addressed.