How to avoid gifts from your patients after the Christmas holidays?

Abstract

Background: Receiving gifts from patients could generate an ethical dilemma for physicians and refusing a present may be perceived as an offence.

Objective: To differentiate the particular physician characteristics that are associated with receiving gifts from outpatients. To propose a strategy to avoid gifts and thus ethical dilemma.

Design: A prospective and multicentric study in France during the month of January 2024.

Setting: Public hospitals, private hospitals and family practices across 20 cities in France.

Participants: Physicians from 21 medical and surgical specialities. Setting Public hospitals, private hospitals and family practices across 20 cities in France.

Interventions: Each physician completed a questionnaire that highlighted their habitual practices during consultations and recorded the gifts they received on a standardized gift calendar.

Main outcomes measures: Receiving at least one gift during January 2024.

Results: In total, 655 physicians were contacted before December 31st, 2023, 109 (16.6%) positively responded, of them 76 (70%) declared receiving at least one gift from patients. An experience>10 years in the current job (P=0.04), being the "Explorer" Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality type (P=0.034), and a frequent delay of over 30minutes at the end of the day of consultations (P=0.048) were statistically associated with a higher likelihood of receiving at least one gift from patients in multivariate analysis. The physicians who received the most gifts per 100 consultations were those with over 10 years experience and those who fell under the MBTI personality role "Explorer": 2.72 (IQR [1.56-7.55], P=0.029) and 3.33 (IQR [2.16-6.43], P=0.028), respectively.

Conclusion: After analysing the factors that increase the risk of receiving a gift from a patient, we have surmised the following advice for physicians who do not wish to find themselves in the midst of an ethical dilemma. They should avoid staying in the same service for more than 5 years, try to adopt the MBTI personality type "Analyst" and be on time in their consultations.