Article Text
Abstract
Personal identity is critical to provider–patient interactions. Patients and doctors tend to self-select, ideally forming therapeutic units that maximise the patients' benefit. Recently, however, ‘reality’ has changed. The internet and virtual worlds such as Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) allow models of identity and provider–patient interactions that go beyond the limits of mainstream personal identity. In this paper some of the ethical implications of virtual patient–provider interactions, especially those that have to do with personal identity, are explored.
- Medical ethics/bioethics
- philosophy of medicine/healthcare
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Footnotes
Competing interests Neither of the authors have any conflicts of interest or stand to gain financially by the publication of this paper.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.