Given the nature of your field of practice or the issues your patient is visiting you for, physical contact with them may become necessary. For example, you may conduct a routine physical examination and thereby must touch the patient’s abdomen or lymph nodes for any possible abnormalities. Or, you may conduct a procedure like an injection or stitching that requires you to touch the affected body part to hold steady. But most unfortunately, your patient may miscontrue these standard procedures as your making inappropriate sexual advances toward them. With that being said, please read on to discover how to respond to a patient who accuses you of making sexual contact and how a seasoned New York sexual misconduct lawyer at Walker Medical Law can help you fight off this serious threat to your character and medical career.
What does sexual misconduct mean in a medical setting?
Simply put, as a medical professional, you may be accused and subsequently found guilty of sexual misconduct if you exhibit any behaviors or actions that exploit your patient with a relationship in a sexual way. This may be something as small as making a joke in front of your patient that is sexual in nature or that has sexual connotations. Or, something as explicit as physically coming into contact with your patient in a way that can be reasonably construed as sexual by your patient.
What if my patient accuses me of making sexual contact with them?
In any event, if your patient finds themselves to be the victim of your sexual contact, they may report you to the state’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC) or Office of Professional Discipline (OPD). They may even file a lawsuit against you, which may then potentially prompt a criminal investigation against you. For any and all of these cases, you must effectively defend that you did not participate in these behaviors or actions.
Hopefully, your workplace already has a policy that requires a fellow medical professional or a member of your medical staff to be present in the examination room when you are with your patient. That way, this individual may testify on your behalf and affirm that such sexual contact did not happen and that you truly stayed within the standard protocols for a physical examination or medical procedure. They may even attest that the patient gave explicit verbal consent before you physically contacted them.
You may even lean on your medical staff to have notes or eyewitness accounts of this patient behaving oddly in the waiting room or at any point during your examination. Though you may not want to take it to this point, you may have to dig into this patient’s medical records and identify if they have a history of a psychological disorder.
Before entering these proceedings, you should have already hired a competent OPMC/OPD misconduct defense lawyer to represent you. So, if you have not done so already, please contact Walker Medical Law today.
