Following the prescribing guidelines made me a target
This account was submitted by a healthcare provider and de-identified before publication. Details that could identify a patient or practice have been removed, and it is shared with the provider’s consent.
Pain management already involves difficult conversations about what can and cannot be safely prescribed, and one individual responded to my following the clinical and legal guidelines by leaving escalating reviews that turned personal and, eventually, menacing. The hostility spread across two review sites, and the tone in the later posts moved from angry to something that genuinely alarmed me.
I could not explain the clinical or regulatory reasons for my prescribing decisions publicly without disclosing the patient, so the platform's reply box was closed to me. The whole point of the guidelines is safety, and following them should not make a physician a target with no recourse.
I was left managing real fear while the posts stayed live and I stayed silent, and it took a toll on my sleep and on my sense of safety at work.
I documented every post and consulted an attorney specifically about the threatening language, but the advice, familiar by now, was that the reviews mostly sat within the platform's definition of permissible speech, and that little could be done unless a threat became specific and credible.