Prompt
You are the only family physician in a town of 3,000 people, two hours from the nearest city. On a Sunday afternoon, the one day a week you have promised your family you will not work, a patient knocks on your front door. He needs you to sign a form confirming that he was too sick to work last week, or his employer will not pay him for those five days. The form is due tomorrow morning, and your clinic is closed until Tuesday. This is the third time this month that a patient has come to your home, and an hour ago your 10-year-old son asked you why you always choose your patients over him. What would you do?
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After you practice: what this question tests and how to approach it
What this question tests
- Professionalism and integrity
- Self-reflection and growth
- Health systems and advocacy
How to approach this question
This MMI station on physician wellbeing tests how you balance a patient's urgent but small need against your promise to your family and your own limits as the only doctor in town. Name each person's interests: the patient's lost pay, your son's feelings, and your capacity to keep serving the town over many years. Ask aloud whether the form could be handled another way by tomorrow, and why patients keep coming to your home. Decide what you'd do this Sunday, then explain how you'd set clearer boundaries and fix the access problem behind these visits. When the station reveals that your own clinic let the patient down, consider what responsibility that places on you and how it changes your response.
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