People usually see doctors when something has gone very wrong with their life. It’s scary when your body backs you into a corner, and fear makes people act stupid and angry. I would hope they could be given a little bit of slack.
I do not think it is appropriate to talk about any details, but something somewhat adjacent to this is that a lot of my colleagues didn’t go into pediatrics because they hate dealing with parents.
In IT, all the worst patients are doctors.
Hopefully no actual doctors answer this question though 🙂
My first job out of college was in a hospital. When you see doctors outside of their own setting, you quickly realize that >90% of them are pretty stupid at literally everything else. I was an accountant processing travel reimbursements for business-related professional expenses (mostly vacations disguised as conferences and workshops for CMEs) and many of them just could NOT understand why they weren’t allowed to claim alcohol on their travel reimbursements. Literally, the IRS will not allow it. And even if it did, state law forbids it, too. Sometimes, I got angry emails because they couldn’t claim miles for taking a detour to visit a relative before going to their destination after I adjusted it as if they drove directly from work to the airport. Shit like that. I was good friends with the IT guy there and he had many similar gripes. Most of his job was arriving on-site to plug machines in because they swore up and down on the phone that the machine was plugged in.
I’m convinced the majority of doctors are just average intelligence people who spent a decade practicing and mastering a skill. That’s it. Anyone can be a doctor if they can be allowed into med school and sink the time and effort into becoming one.
I won’t get into specific patients (I’m not a doctor but work in health care) the worst patients in general is an older person with untreated borderline personality disorder. They call screaming their heads off that the medication they’ve been on forever is giving them side effects, and it’s just that they have this void within them that you can never pour enough attention into. They’re obnoxious, demanding, and treat people in an ignorant fashion as if you are a servant at their disposal, and if you don’t answer them right away they start threatening suicide. The younger ones with BPD are largely at least somewhat aware and are calmer and just sad and tearful, but the total dysregulation of the older ones is a hell of a thing to see.
I have family members who are doctors and they generally agree that the worst patients are physically/verbally abusive ones. Apart from that, they complain a lot about patients who don’t follow their advice and then get angry when they don’t get better.
I work in healthcare. My best patient is the guy who punched the rudest doctor in the face. If that rude doctor were in this thread, I bet he’d pick that guy.
Lookup the phrase “Swamps of Degobah”
Ethically horrible thing to ask. I hope no one answers.
There’s a 0% chance doctors don’t talk shit with each other about patients, just like in every other service profession. They literally talk shit about patients on charts sometimes.
The unethical thing would be if they revealed protected information in the process.
My sister doesn’t talk specifically about patients by name, but she’ll say things about what she told someone to do that they didn’t, and the consequence was exactly what she told them. Stuff like that.
My dad is a doctor. I grew up around him and his partners.
They don’t. Outside of work, they don’t talk shop and want to do anything else. Usually golf.
I won’t say never, but work is very stressful, so they do their best to leave it behind.
Interesting. I’m going to need to hear from more people if I’m going to buy that’s standard, though.
There’s established medical acronyms like “Funny Looking Kid” or “Get Out Of My ER”. The stress thing depends heavily on specialty once out of residency, and a stressful job can actually mean more story time once they’re done with a patient - just ask a paramedic.
I also had a good friend who was a paramedic until recently, and those are some gossipy bitches, lol. That guy would never shut up about work
