What's your take on taking gifts from patients' relatives?

I'm just doing my job, I hope the person you are caring for gets better and I recognize you'd do anything for them to get better but taking gifts from you is not going to make that any better or any worse.

I've rejected tiny tips in this one month of working, I've started thinking back to my ethics classes, and nowhere was it said that I should not take tips for the work I do. But it kills some preset principles.

I also do not feel I am doing much, if these people are looking for someone to appreciate they should spend it on themselves. They are the ones anxiously staying up or sleeping on uncomfortable beds here in the hospital.

Plus I am being paid by the government to do the work I do, even though I do not think the money is enough. I feel if they want to compensate a doctor like me who is working in an understaffed hospital like the one I am working in...they should give me $40,000. I feel it would be the only adequate amount for the work I do.

Last week I and the Registrar I work with stayed up to 4 times resiting intravenous access that had issues on infants. It took up to 15 hours of our week. One of them was a very violent baby and needed to be sedated before it could be done and the other one had very fragile veins that immediately break apart at the site of a needle.

Is it right to say that the compensation they are trying to give me is not enough? I don't think so...Even if a patient's relative could give me the $40,000 it would just hurt me to say no right now.

There is something about taking money for a job that is not done yet that makes me feel weird. Not that I do not have confidence in treatment, but there are always outliers that will not respond well to treatment or will respond well and will still fail to get better.

Why would I take that kind of credit...then also, I am not the one who is exactly prescribing the medication...I am simply a soldier sent to carry out orders. If they are finding a person to give money to, they should walk up to the person giving the orders...the consultant.

I simply tell them when they insist that I am grateful and it doesn't sit well with me taking money from them.

Hope you enjoyed this post?

Leave a comment on what you think...Am I wrong to not take the gifts...?

Would you take a $40,000 gift if it were you?

Do you think I'd be able to resist the money if it were $40,000?