Sticky situation

Only six weeks into working back in e-town, and I've run into the professional situation I most wanted to avoid, knowing I probably couldn't have avoided it forever, but nonetheless was hoping for a longer reprieve.

And that is being medically involved in a patient who knows my family. I have now received two phone calls to my home from the father and grandfather of this child wanting more information about the illness (totally fine and legit), and then asking me to speed up a referral to a sub specialist that has already been made by someone else (not appropriate). By the way, it was made on Friday, and the phone call came Monday. These people don't know my parents well and I hardly know them at all; hence, I didn't recognize them when I saw them in the hospital. But they took note of my name tag, put two and two and two together and called my family up.

This question of giving advice in a non-clinical setting comes up a lot in our field. Technically, if you give advice in the capacity of a physician, you are medically/legally responsible for the consequences and could get sued potentially. Now I don't want to be one of those people who refuses to give any advice in a social setting and says things like "I can refer you to someone" or "please make an appointment at my office" because I find that to be snobbery. And I would expect those in other professions to provide the same courtesy. But I do understand some people's reluctance, not because of a money issue, but because of a medical/legal one.

I would have no problems with friends calling me up for medical advice, but when it spreads to friends of friends or acquaintainces, I think at some point, I will need to draw the line. Talking to some collegues, they've even gone as far as making house calls, all the while having no documentation of the medical assessment.

The other thing is (brace yourselves, I'm about to make a sterotypical generalization of a whole culture) ... that chinese people are demanding and unreasonable! And because you speak their language, they become even MORE demanding, saying things they would NEVER ask of another physician. And I think it's THIS aspect that bothers me the most. And if they have the slightest science/biology/pharmacology background, watch out! They then talk crap about you behind your back if they are unhappy with your services, and it spreads around the small chinese community. Sigh... I wonder if I can hide from this patient population and for how long.