Medical advice is the provision of a formal professional opinion regarding what a specific individual should or should not do to restore or preserve health. Typically, medical advice involves giving a diagnosis and/or prescribing a treatment for medical condition.
Medical advice is given in the context of a doctor–patient relationship. A licensed health care professional can be held legally liable for the advice he or she gives to a patient; giving bad advice may be considered medical malpractice under specified circumstances.
Medical advice can be distinguished from medical information, which is the relation of facts. Discussing facts and information is considered a fundamental free speech right and is not considered medical advice. Medical advice can also be distinguished from personal advice, even if the advice concerns medical care.
Famous quotes containing the words medical and/or advice:
“If science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than the gestures of ceremony.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Many more children observe attitudes, values and ways different from or in conflict with those of their families, social networks, and institutions. Yet today’s young people are no more mature or capable of handling the increased conflicting and often stimulating information they receive than were young people of the past, who received the information and had more adult control of and advice about the information they did receive.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)