Your spouse/partner gets a skin infection and needs antibiotics: Is it ethical for you to prescribe for them?

{Extract] Although physicians commonly treat their spouse, partner, or members of their own family, there is ethical concern about the appropriateness of doing so. Under certain circumstances, it is ethically permissible to treat one's family members. Clearly, emergent care, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, should be provided as it would customarily to anyone in society, regardless of the relationship between the physician and the injured. The matter becomes more complex, however, when the symptoms are nonemergent, yet possibly indicative of a serious disease process, or when the diagnosis is out of the scope of one's clinical skills.