ABSTRACT
This chapter considers situations in which the general practitioner (GP) — patient encounter may become more personal’ and less professional’, the interpersonal distance may narrow with shifting of boundaries, and the doctor’s degree of emotional involvement with the patient may alter. It explores judgements by doctors about interpersonal distance between doctor and patient by focusing on friendliness and friendship in the doctor-patient encounter. Interpersonal pressures for the GP arise in a variety of ways. The pressures and anxieties of these emotional attachments are increased by a pre-existing relationship of some kind, narrowing the interpersonal distance between GP and patient. This might be knowing the patient’s family, knowing the patient as a friend or a colleague, meeting the patient through other activities or at school, or even employing the patient either at the surgery or in the doctor’s home. Patients have been reported to transgress the limit of the doctor—patient relationship3 and actively to test the doctor’s personal or professional boundary.
