Providing medical advice and treatment to family members and friends is common practice for physicians, even though it is discouraged in current medical guidelines.1 More than 99% of physicians receive requests from family members asking for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment,2 and 85% of physicians have written at least 1 prescription for a nonpatient.2,3 Reasons for providing care to family members include convenience, cost savings, and the perception of having greater knowledge or concern than colleagues. Yet physicians may also decide not to intervene in the care of relatives or friends, concerned by a lack of objectivity, fearing misdiagnosis, or recognizing an inability to provide complete and continuous care.2,4-7 In addition, most codes of ethics, such as the Good Medical Practice code of the General Medical Counsel,1 state that physicians should not treat family members. Opinions emanating from these codes specify that physicians may treat relatives and friends in case of minor ailments or in an emergency situation, when no other health care professional is available.8 The literature also suggests that treating family members can lead to increased diagnostic testing and costs.9 Despite their reservations, physicians may still feel compelled to be involved in the care of a family member or friend. When confronted with illness in the family, physicians face conflicting personal and professional expectations of themselves and others (eg, family members, other physicians).10 Although requests from family and friends are common and the literature reveals some of the complexity involved in managing them, there is little empirical evidence on how physicians themselves experience these requests. Understanding these experiences can be informative for guiding current and future physicians in how to respond. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore the experiences and attitudes of physicians when they encounter medical requests from family and friends (nonpatients). We explored this phenomenon in a family medicine setting given that family physicians may be more likely to receive a variety of medical requests because of their general medical expertise. We were primarily interested in the experiences of junior physicians, who are still in an early stage of their career, and those of senior physicians, who are more experienced in the field.