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In reply to the discussion: I'm angry and conflicted about a patient right now. Maybe talking about it will help. [View all]The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,270 posts)about some of their more loathsome clients: they are upholding the standards of their profession by providing the client with the best defense to which the law entitles him. You are likewise upholding the standards of your profession by providing this guy with the best medical care you are obligated by those standards to give him. I used to do some appellate work for a lawyer who represented some pretty despicable characters, and although I seldom interacted with them directly, I was obligated to construct the best argument the law would support, and that could theoretically bust the creep out of prison or at least get him a new trial. We almost always lost because criminal convictions are rarely overturned on appeal, and all of these dirtbags were pretty clearly guilty.
Still, we had to put aside the fact that the client was a dirtbag and just do our jobs. It's probably harder for you because you have to interact with him directly. But of course your job is to offer him appropriate medical treatment and advice regardless, as you are doing, and you'll do that until he's hauled off to prison - where he'll probably be for a very long time, as he should be. (And he probably has a lawyer who doesn't like him any more than you do, and had the additional burden of having to look at the evidence.)