Box 1.

Questions to guide reasoning about informal medical encounters

1.Who is vulnerable to harm?
2.What can be done?
  1. Consider local and global, curative and preventative courses of action.

3.Who should do it?
  1. Consider proximity, expertise, authority and existing therapeutic relationships.

  2. If I cannot do anything, can I help or alert someone who can?

4.What could go wrong?
  1. Could I harm the case subject, colleagues, the public at large or myself?

  2. Are there more or less harmful ways of achieving the same ends?

  3. Is there anything I or others can do to mitigate potential side effects?