5 Things I Can't Stand About Going to the Doctor: part 5 of 5
The last thing I hate about going to the doctor is poor bedside manner. You all know what I am referring to and I would welcome hearing your examples of this. Let me offer my own brief story on the matter. When I was in college, I spent a lot of time studying in my room. I would sit on my bed with the back of my head pressed against the wall and my legs extended out to relax. Sounds uncomfortable I guess but it wasn't that bad actually. Or so I thought. Within days, I began to get excruciating pains when exercising, especially anything that required neck pressure like sit ups or bench pressing. I became so worried that I went to the Emergency Room. I was explaining the symptoms to the ER physician and I said to him that after thinking about this, the only thing I could think of that would be causing this would be me pressing my head against the back of the wall for long periods. The doctor literally yelled at me and said, "I'm the one who is the doctor here so why don't leave the figuring out part of this to me!" I was stunned and told him I was just trying to help. He just stormed away, ordered an MRI (which was normal), and I was discharged home with some pain medications. I stopped pressing my head against the back of the wall and the pain never came back. Gee, thanks doc.
posted by MedFriendly | 12:06 AM
3 Comments:
Man, that's terrible. I can tell you that in med school, that's NOT the way they're teaching us to interact with patients. The most important part of diagnosis is getting a good history. I think most doctors are open to a patient's ideas about the etiology of his/her condition.
Hello, great series. I am a medical student but still could identify with a lot of it.
I hate when doctors use jargon instead of making the attempt to communicate on the patient's level. I'm not saying doctors should be patronizing to patients, but is it really so hard to remember that 99.9% of the population has not had a medical education like you have, so you need to explain things to people in plain English?
I also hate doctors who are openly judgmental. When I was in college, I saw the student health physician about a chronic problem. His response was to ask me in an accusing tone, "Why are you coming to get treated for this now?" Besides making me feel bad, he certainly didn't make me comfortable where I wanted to tell him the personal event that had made me finally ready to deal with the issue.
Like the other med student said, I honestly don't think that most doctors are like that though--at least not the ones that they let near the med students. ;-)
The thing I most hate about going to the doctor is getting information from one. It feels like I'm having to beg, and that's anathema to me. Like, what my test results are (even IF they're 'good'). Docs seem to think I'm a dumb bunny. I don't think I look or sound like one. My goal in life is to be so healthy I NEVER have to see a doctor.
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