REGULAR RANTS

About time patients knew it: doctors are human beings too. However most doctors were too polite to tell patients directly how they felt about certain things that bugged them. That is why when Reader’s Digest undertook a survey of doctors ranging from general practitioners to surgeons and psychiatrists, the comments about how they viewed patients were revealing.

Examples of comments:
Doctors were tired of repeating the same old advice to patients whom they knew would only pay lip service to this advice. For example, advice about dieting, stopping smoking.

Doctors were tired of waiting for their patients who took up valuable time answering phone calls in the office.

Doctors were tired of seeing patients who refused to follow medical advice and came back expecting the doctor to cure complications occurring from this very refusal.

Patients wanting referral to 3 different specialists for the same complaint, very often because some friend told them that they were good in that field.

Patients bringing relatives along with them when the appointment was for one only, in the expectation that the doctor would provide free consultation at the same time.

Patients who made it clear in their faces or mannerisms that they did not believe what the doctor told them.

Patients who consulted a doctor for an illness, went home and consulted multiple websites and came back to tell the doctor of a different approach to things and expecting the doctor to agree with them. After all the websites knew more than the doctor.

For the entire report see this