Attitudes and Feelings of Doctors Caring for Their Colleagues: a Qualitative Study in Picardy

The sick doctor is a patient apart. His right of prescription and his knowledge of semiology easily lead him to self-medication. Several factors linked to his profession may also lead to a delay in care: overworking with schedules that are not compatible to organize follow-up, poor access to prevention or occupational medicine for liberal doctors but also modesty And ashamed of being sick (and especially unfit to heal). Specialized centers and specific training courses concerning burnout, addictions and psychiatric pathologies of doctors are currently emerging.

To look after a colleague also seems to imply certain specificities like the sharing of knowledge or the medical vocabulary. The physician-patient relationship may seem easier, but it can also lead to confusion of roles and create ambiguity. In this case, the doctor may feel too close to the doctor-patient to maintain his objectivity and to treat him properly. In the same way, the relationship of trust can be altered by sharing medical knowledge, communication techniques or confidence building which can thus lose their effectiveness.

This physician-caregiver relationship has already been the subject of some qualitative research demonstrating the difficulty from the point of view of the treated. The feelings and attitudes of the doctor caring for his colleague remains a field very little studied. The research hypothesis is that there are specificities to this relationship.