Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
How to piss off your doctor without even breaking a sweat
Yes, we all know what scum doctors are. Some doctors. You don’t need to send me your horror stories; I gave you plenty of opportunity for that last week. And if you really want equal time, let me know, and we can have a How to Piss Off Your Patient free-for-all.
But for tonight, we are considering ways in which patients poison the doctor-patient relationship.
Yeah, sorry — I’m recycling my photos. Didn’t have anything else of me in doctor clothes, and the facial expression is appropriate.
Before I launch into my hit list, there are some things you need to know about the doctor-patient relationship. Maybe other doctors feel differently about this, but I can’t speak for them.
I can’t treat people I don’t trust. I can’t treat children whose parents I don’t trust. Substitute “hate” for trust, and now we’re up to four commandments. But how do patients make me distrust or even hate them?
Let’s start with the minor sins and work up to the biggies. With the minor sins, it often takes a number of offenses before I call it quits, so keep that in mind (I’m not that touchy).
1. Be habitually late, no-show your appointments, or call to cancel within minutes of the appointment. We’re backed up three or four weeks on new patient appointments, and I know a lot of ENTs out there who have it much worse. Folks need to see me. If you’re not going to show up, let us know so that someone else can come instead.
2. Ignore your bill. Yes, this is a minor sin. All we ask is that people talk to us. Can’t make a payment this month? Fine. I don’t charge interest and I’m not a hard ass. It’s when you ignore our statements and warnings month after month that I start wondering what kind of putz you think I am.
3. Ignore your personal hygeine. I have never discharged a patient over poor personal hygeine, although I have been tempted. One thing is for certain: if I dread the smell of you, I’m less likely to forgive your other transgressions.
Now for the big sins.
4. Interrupt me constantly and don’t answer my questions. This is all about you, after all. It’s not like I actually have to know anything about your history to help you. (/snark)
5. For parents: to hell with your child; tell me all about YOUR health problems. I swear, this pisses me off to no end. Such egocentrism makes me wonder about your fitness as a parent. Just remember: in California, we are by law required to report unfit parents to Child Protective Services. Why is this a major sin? Because I don’t have time to hear about your health problems. I do have time to hear about your child’s problems, and I need that time to do my job and be her doctor. I can’t do that if you’re constantly redirecting the conversation back to you.
Please, someone with a psych background, tell me what personality disorder this is. It’s gotta have a name.
6. Ignore my advice. Yeah, I’m often wrong. Medicine is not an exact science. But, see, I can’t even begin to figure out how to treat you if you ignore my advice. You’re wasting my time (see #1) and yours.
7. Be a squirrel. Definition time: a squirrel is a patient who has an agenda that I am not privy to. They’re scam artists, one and all. Some want disability, some want to increase their VA benefits, some want pain meds, some have an active lawsuit (and it goes without saying I’ll never be able to cure you until your case settles. It’s a law of nature).
8. Be a nut. I have nothing against patients with psychiatric diagnoses, mind you, but don’t expect me to play into them. Hypochondriacs are the worst offenders here. If you have a physical problem, I’ll be happy to treat you — doesn’t matter if you’re on six different psych meds, doesn’t even matter if you’re off all your psych meds. But I cannot cure imaginary diseases.
9. Suck my brain. This includes passive aggression, manipulation, and inappropriate anger. It’s hard to explain, but some folks can be hostile towards their doctor while smiling and making nice-nice. It’s not how they say it, it’s what they’re saying.
Don’t worry about this one; you’re all normal people, and none of you do this. Brainsuckers are angry, miserable, evil, twisted souls whose main goal in life is to suck all pleasure out of everyone else’s life.
And the extra special biggies . . .
10. Lie to me. This will get you discharged from my practice faster than anything else. I have tolerated brainsuckers for years; I’ve kept many of them in the fold because they chose to feed sparingly at each visit. But liars have no place in my practice. Lie to me, and you’ve killed the doctor-patient relationship. End of story.
11. Yell at my staff. I have wonderful people working for me, true gems. I try to treat them well and I expect you to do the same. If you yell at them, threaten them, or lie to them, you will be discharged.
Oh, that reminds me . . .
12. Threaten to kill me. I think there’s a law against that, isn’t there?
You know, it’s simple when you get right down to it. Be honest with me and listen to me, and I’ll listen to you, I’ll do my best to cure you and I won’t stop until I have exhausted all of my options, and then I’ll do my best to find someone else who might cure you.
By the way — showing up without an appointment and expecting to be seen? That should have made it up there somewhere. File it under minor sins.
D.
Hey, good news! The only two I’ve ever broken are #1 & #2. No really, even with the docs I didn’t like! 😉
And the ones I really had a problem with were doctors that I met when I was pregnant, so they might not be as bad as I remember [okay, a couple really were Not Nice People].
I’m not as bad about #1 as I used to be [if I can get everybody ready and/or situated where they will be taken care of]. But we’re still a little late or barely on time most of the time [and that’s everywhere, not just doctor’s offices]
With number 2, we’re still not the greatest, although when you go to church with your GP [or know him personally] you tend to get the bill paid more quickly [at least we do].
I don’t know what my deal is with paying bills, though. I tend to lose stuff [horribly disorganized around here… we suck] and then I feel like an ass when I find it or get a Letter three months later, so I tend not to call until I have the money [which, with our budget, usually takes time].
Yes, I know better, it just feels like the principal’s office or something.
But as for the other Commands, well, that kind of behavior is just unacceptable anywhere[it’s why I’m mostly a Hermit, then I can avoid the crazies. Well, except the ones I live with, but they aren’t usually dangerous or toxic, just weird. Hee hee. I have no idea where they get it! 😛
In this age of cell phones, folks ought to call their doctor if they’re going to be late. Many do, but not all. Anyway, I’m only really tweaked when folks show up 10 or 15 minutes late, then lie about their appointment time. We know your appointment time. Needless to say, it’s the lying part that cheeses me.
As for the bill, if I remember correctly we send out three notices (each a month apart) before we send people to collections. Each notice has a big colorful sticker on it asking the patient to call us to discuss the bill if there are problems. Pretty generous, IMO.
I’m pretty easy going and my doctor is my friend.
But one day a gynocologist performed an operation on me without telling me what it was beforehand nor how it was going to be. (a picture of my fallopian tubes – he had to inject something into them & it hurt like a mothafucka)
I think I poisoned our relationship rather irrovacably when I kicked him as he stood at my feet. I got him in the balls.
I’m actually sorta friends with our GP and she reads my books. How cool is that?
Sorry I didn’t enter your medical story contest. I have a doozie. I’ll tell you all about it in a couple of weeks, after I get past this revision. 😉
I don’t think I’ve ever broken any of these, except possibly #6 when I got the ‘you’re middle-aged, overweight, and you need to lose the spare tire, pal’ speech. And I haven’t really ignored it, I just haven’t been sufficiently diligent in the prosecution of the advice.
It all comes down to respect: my doctor treats me with respect, and I treat him the same way.
Good for you, Sam! I’m fanatical about informed consent, and it pisses me off (lots of things do, can you tell?) when I hear about doctors doing a slipshod job of it.
Tam, I’m looking forward to it.
Dean, perhaps I should be clearer about this. I know my overweight-smoker-drinkers aren’t going to change, or at least there’s little chance of it. But when I ask someone to use ear drops for ten days, he better have a damned good reason why he didn’t. Huge difference between not making a difficult lifestyle change and not following some simple advice on a prescription. It’s the latter I find so frustrating.
Having a nurse for a mother has probably made me a better patient – while I know doctors aren’t god (despite what some of them would like you to believe), I do have a healthy respect for the fact that they have at least 8 years more education than I do in the care and feeding of the human body. He may not be right 100% of the time, but his odds are a lot better than mine.
I’m fortunate, though, to have a GP who will listen to me if I respectfully disagree, and either tell me where I’m wrong, or take what I’m saying into account.
I’m a good little girl; I’ve never broken ANY of these rules. I treat my doctors like Gods, and if they treat me badly in any way, I move on (only had to do that in Vegas).
When I think of the teacher/student/parent relationship…I could no doubt write my own blog on the subject IF I had the time and wasn’t bogged down with papers/stupid paper work.
I have a passive/aggressive student I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Today the little shit called me stupid (“you’re stupid”, he said, sounding stupid). That’s it, dig your own grave you little bastard. I had the Deans send a narc to pick him up.
Okay, Sis, my goal when we’re in Vegas is to show you how damn easy it is to set up and write a blog. Think of it as another form of pen-palling, because that’s exactly what it is. And if we make your blog anonymous, you can speak your mind.
sxKitten, as I’ve mentioned before (somewhere) we’re taught to listen to our patients. How that falls apart, I’ll never know, but many of us retain the skill.
I’m in the clear. My late father was a doctor. My brother’s a shrink. I would never disrespect a doctor or his staff in any of those ways.
This doesn’t mean I actually love going to the doctor’s office — like I have to do today with a new-to-me primary care guy. You’d think that growing up in a medical family (Mom was a nurse)would make me immune to white coat syndrome. Ack. It didn’t.
13. Report for your appointment high or drunk. And please, do puke on some expensive, hard-to-clean equipment.
14. Grope your doctor and/or the staff. Be sure to add that intimiate leer and a few “Nice [insert name of body part groped], babe.”
15. Stalk the staff or, if you’re a cop, run their plates so you can find out where they live.
But you know, you really haven’t had a relationship poisoned until your patient stabs you in the hip with a dirty knife. That does kind of nullify the oath.
I think I’m okay, but I have shown up w/o an appt.
Once b/c I literally lost my voice. Not laryngitis where you can at least whisper, I truly could not make a sound. I had to hand write a note at the doc’s office when I got there, and, come to find out, my ‘cold’ or whatever, had swollen my neck to the point where my airway was starting to close. They gave me some kind of shot for it. The whole thing was weird and I remember being so desperate to see the doc and they were so busy and I couldn’t talk at all on the phone and I was so sick and wheezing–it was stressful.
The other time was the stupid IVF clinic that never answers the phone or returns calls so that one is sort of on them. Sadly, I think they preferred patients to walk in.
I will say, on the hypochondria, I would probably qualify except, all too often, something is wrong. The problem is, once you’re betrayed by medicine (i.e. many years of undiagnosed PCOS despite lots of complaints or have had pulmonologists scream at you ‘who said you had asthma’ when your lung capacity is at 50% and you can’t breathe well enough to talk) you sort of don’t trust anybody. It’s gotten to where I want all the tests I can get b/c I want empirical data, not some unknown doc’s opinion (and I have no patience anymore with ‘wait and see’ which is way too conservative in my opinion).
So, my point with all this ranting is, some of the icky behavior is part of a vicious cycle, bad doctors can create bad patients who then go on to torture good doctors like you.
M
Hmmmmmmmmmmm, you may be opening a can of worms for me.
The little bastard? He’s out of my class. Whoo hoo!!!!!!!!!!
So I guess golf jokes are out, too, huh?
JP — Yeah, and don’t joke about suing your doctor, either.
Congrats, Sis!
I hear you, Michelle, and when I get an angry new patient I usually point their anger out to them and try to get them to realize I’m not the proper target. I do it in such a way as to (try to) win them over to me . . . . But some folks stay angry no matter what.
Sheila, you’re giving me more ideas . . .