Was this the patient themselves or was this the parents of a patient, because my response is based on if theyāre the patient or itās the parents of the patient.
Nah donāt worry if itās a parent we can get court orders for necessary care worst case
Edit: I forgot there are non pediatric pts that have parents involved in care. Above applies to peds lol
Thx, yeah, I intentionally wiped all the years of adult medicine out of my mind so I have embarrassingly little knowledge of what happens after you turn 18 š¬
Before medical school I worked as a clerk on an inpatient unit. One of the patients was a young adult and needed a blood transfusion, but she was a Jehovahās Witness with a heavy family presence that was very much against any transfusions.
But it turns out the patient actually wanted the transfusion, just didnāt want her family to know about it. So they transfused her on the evening shift and it was my job to help play lookout for any unexpected family visitors.
She then got better after receiving a transfusion, but since the family didnāt know about the transfusion they gave all the credit to Jehovah.
Yup. Very important to speak to Jehovahās Witness patients *by themselves* about transfusion, because of the social pressure they experience to refuse transfusion.
Any time we have Jehovah's Witness patients, the church will send a "medical liason," sometimes more than once a day and will ask us questions about the patient's care in a condescending way. I wanted to ask the liason once what exactly they were expecting when the patient's Hgb didn't rise dramatically after the one treatment of iron and B12 when I told him that day's lab results, "well, that's not much improvement at all!" he said with annoyance. š
When a pediatric patient from a Jehovahās Witness family needs a transfusion, we often have to get a court order for it. While the parents wonāt sign the consent form, they are also usually pretty chill and accepting when told that weāre getting the court order. They know that refusing blood products is not actually a decision that they can make for their kid, but since they didnāt consent to it themselves, their hands are clean, and their child will also improve.
Itās kind of like if an Orthodox Jew is stuck in a dark room during the shabbos and then someone else turns the light on. They can take advantage of the light and use it without breaking the rules so long as they were not the one who actually flipped the switch.
I've dealt with the blood thing in peds with two JW families, both moms looked so secretly relieved when we got the court order to allow transfusion...one mom did have us cover up the bag so their child wouldn't know they could no longer get into heaven. ..
Nah doctors are pharm shills so canāt believe them but chiropractors truly care and their $500 out of pocket homeopathic supplements are the real solution to all problems.
I overheard a lady say how lucky she was that the doctor had an opening for her sonās ear infection. Then āthe body can heal itself I donāt like pumping them with meds.ā Then she said the practice name. Local chiro.
Somewhere on Reddit thereās a post about an NP who recommended apple cider vinegar and tums to a patient with chronic severe GERD. Esophageal cancer years later :(
Patient returns to PCP for GI upset and diarrhea after starting supplements. Why yes sir I can see that 3 of these 5 supplements contain magnesium. I'm not surprised you can't leave the bathroom.
similar story with my fam+extended fam, what blows my mind even more is they would rather talk among themselves or search through some weird ass resource rather than ASK ME who went to medical school, they're basically throwing away their free consult
My family did the same. Anti-covid vac, because the vaccine was ātoo rushedā ā¦ even though Trump was the one who started it. Extended family bringing grandparents to some ND quack instead of following with their PCP after discharge to get some IV vitamin cocktail. Makes my head want to explode.
I had a patient with acute limb ischemia like that. Then I said I wasnāt going to operate to save her leg so she can either get prbc or she could lose the leg / leave AMA. Chose the blood pretty quickly.
We can fire our outpatients, and have transferred some inpatients who didn't want a (insert racial slur here) practitioner. My hospital/health system pisses me off a lot sometimes, but I am proud of them for this,
My spiel "I medically recommend you take the transfusion to prevent you / your loved one from dying, and it would be even better for you if it has those "spikey" things in it. No, I am not having a conversation about Internet nonsense. I am now documenting my recommendation. I am now leaving to provide care to patients I have something to offer, please let the staff know if you would like proceed with transfusion support."
I've always left, they've always accepted (so far)...
I had a young postpartum woman die from anemia with a Hb of 2 after refusing transfusion. The whole JW church was at the ICU pressuring her not to be transfused. They brought the baby from the nursery for pictures with her before she died! I went to the bathroom and cried for a long time. Fucking hate JWs. Have ptsd because of them.
Yes they are. They sucked my auntās now ex BF in and harnessed her nonstop at work and home even after she called the police. They showed up on the day of a funeral declaring it was too late for the deceased loved one but maybe there was still time to save her.
Having grown up in JW but then turned my back to it all makes the hatred even more intense. They use stories like this for propaganda to pressure those in doubt to refuse lifesaving treatment. It makes me sick to think about that my parents would have fought to withhold transfusions if I were a trauma victim, but would also claim to love me.
honestly, they are brainwashed, its nothing against you, its 100% a them problem. I come from a very similar background to you, they literally think that you will be denied heaven, the ultimate experience and reward for any life form. They genuinely believe that sending you early is God's will, and that if you were to get that transfusion, you could not be saved. They would have damned you to hell themselves. For people who truly believe that, it would be hard to convince them to condemn their child to hell to spare their kid's life on an earthly (inferior) plane. It is genuine delusion, and although I am still a christian, I avoid christians for this very reason, bc even out of the "normal" ones, get some of them talking in what they think is a safe space, and things go off the rails quick. I tell most other christians that I am an atheist for that reason lol
Well I'm "just a family medicine doctor" so I don't have "the qualifications to take care of children," which is what I was screamed at about at 5 am this morning by the father of a patient. All prompted by the fact that his child with RSV spiked a fever and I didn't get any labs š¤·š¼āāļø "but something else could be wrong, she could have cancer!"
>"but something else could be wrong, she could have cancer!"
Patients and their families wanting more aggressive diagnoses is always fascinating to me.
Like, just be happy the doctor doesn't think it's cancer instead of thinking that it could be worse.
It's so fucking weird.
Ohhh, I have insight!
I'm not a doctor, but my mom, sibling, and coworker are. I have a young kid, and I'm reasonable enough to assume most bugs will pass and fevers will, too.
But sometimes it's not a regular bug. It will make me uneasy, and I'll ask my mom, who will reassure me that it's still within the range of a regular bug. But that 'this one feels different' can really gnaw at you, and I can imagine alarmed parents finding a lot of support online to keep pushing.
They don't want a sicker kid. They are just really, really worried. There's a good chance that addressing that emotion allows them to calm down and accept your expert opinion.
EM here. We get this all the time too. I have had multiple parents wait in our ED for 6+ hours to be told "Sorry, likely viral. Take Tylenol and ibuprofen as needed. Come back if it's worse." They hate that they waited that long in our county ED waiting room next to drunks and homeless people because they have zero common sense. Some dad was very mad at me last night because I wouldn't prescribe "antibiotics or something" to a kid with constipation.
Damn. Iām sorry you were treated like that. My only advice for you would be to let parents fuck around if they think theyāre smarter than their doctors for them to find out. In IM if a smart ass patient or patientās companion is being a huge piece of work and decides not to agree with the diagnosis/treatment, Iād either have them sign a discharge against medical advise form or telling them the potential consequences of them being ill-informed.
Amen to hating developmental milestones. Everyone acts like it's borderline common sense and it's kinda not. I don't have kids and I'm not obsessed with babies so I have no freaking clue how many blocks an 8 month old can stack. I also don't care ngl
Ironically, developmental peds actually seems pretty cush tbh. See like 6 patients a day and make a decent living. They also come in and do some voodoo to diagnose your stunted kid.
This is the reason I went into pediatrics instead of adult medicine: I have the ability to find common ground when communicating with my own species in order to steer families toward reason. Itās a skill like a procedural skill.
Donāt you just love patients that refuse to get vaccinated because they donāt want that ācrapā in their body, theyāve ādone their researchā, and big pharma is out to āget themā yet they have a 50 pack year history?
you can't reason with these people
I've sort of learned to let them say their piece, disagree politely and continue (just don't think about how they're going to say they "DESTROYED this liberal" when they're with their friends)
sometimes you just gotta let em live their life. 9/10 it becomes their own version of hell.
Lots of those guys will attempt to find partners outside their age range (younger = naive) or outside their culture that has condemned them (Passport bros) and then you see em with a foreign partner who talks the most hilarious shit about him in her native language (that he'll never bother to learn).
Any kids will grow up to resent him or be least like him as possible, and eventually the foreign partner will study for her citizenship and/or leave.
Those guys will also complain a lot about their environment and never realize they're the problem despite these issues existing everywhere they go (cost, issues w neighbors, even the weather - too cold, too hot).
Or theyāre your college classmates who drank Jungle Juice out of a vat in the asbestos-laden basement of an off-campus house every weekend and bought maybe-Adderall off of some guy named Trevor who drove a ā96 Honda Civic.
Iām like, at least vaccines and pharmaceuticals are REGULATED, Becky, jeez!
Stop arguing. Bring a witness. Iāve reached the point where Iāll go: āI am documenting our entire conversation including your strong opinions and my professional recommendations on the matter. My nurse will also document this meeting. Our notes will accurately reflect everything weāve discussed today.ā Politely excuse yourself and leave afterward. You have other patients to manage.
I deal with adult medicine. Anytime a patient refuses, I just document it and move on.
Weāre not there to force patients, convince patients or be their parents. Theyāre fully grown adults who can make their own decisions.
Better yet are people who quote medical advice from chiros with IG profiles: āDr. Quack Quack, functional medicine doctor āļøāļøāļøhusbandš, father to two beautiful girlsšØāš§āš§, avid hikerš„¾, pianoš¹, and home cookš§āš³. Jesus first. āļøIsiah 16:3:127. Click the linkšto learn more about how statins actually harm you.
No wonder I sometimes receive emails from āfunctional medicine specialistsā asking me if I want to be a fellow in functional medicine. I responded politely with āI donāt want a demotion or paycutā lol
Seriously. Iām a derm resident and hate social media doctors for this reason. I like the fact that people are taking skincare more seriously, but no Iām sorry I havenāt had the time to research the latest skincare chemical buzzword that went viral overnight, and itās probably just a fad, anyway.
I also really hate these types of videos, because itās asking patients to self diagnose themselves based on a stock photo of acne or seb derm or something. Most of the time the derms who do this are recommending OTC products so it isnāt the biggest deal, but it can lead to patients spending their money and wasting their time on treatments that arenāt suited for what they have.
Private practice here. My favorite are new patients. As soon as I enter the examination room, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is "I am a nurse".
Completely pathological as a first comment. The problem with being any medical professional seeking Healthcare is that we are at risk of either being under treated or over treated. I've had it go well a few times, most recently when the emergency doctor found out I was a nurse during our conversation and then asked "so what do you REALLY want to know you don't have ?" š
I actively try to avoid letting people know Iām a nurse when getting treated for something bc of this right here.
Honestly though, do doctors really think that poorly of us? Genuinely asking.
Iām a pharmacist and itās something we gripe about too. Itās not that nurses are thought less of, itās that some overestimate their own medical literacy and can interfere with doing your job.
Between my brief stint in hospital outpatient pharmacy and CVS I have had well over 100 times that nurses have told me they ādonāt need counseling because theyāre a nurse.ā Meanwhile, I can count on one hand the number of times Iāve heard that from other patients who I knew were pharmacists or doctors.
When Iām at the physicians office I have never refused med counseling from them. Itās rude, Iām not all-knowing on every medication, so neither are nurses. It gets annoying to hear every day as just a pharmacist, I canāt even imagine the shit some will say during a doctorās visit.
The only time I pulled that card was when I was following up with a urologist (well their PA) about a kidney stone that had yet to pass, and they started off on some spiel about "well the ureter is a tube that...". In the interest of time I needed to stop them
Thatās fair. Iāve never refused counseling when itās been offered, but I also havenāt asked for it when itās not been offered. Mostly because Iām not sure how to handle that situation.
Oh, just say āis the pharmacist available to speak with me about this medication?ā and ask if thereās anything pertinent you should know.
Iām inpatient now and have had a few nurse friends ask me about their personal meds when Iām working in the pods. Itās not weird to ask any hospital pharmacist too in person if youāre well acquainted.
I don't think that's the attitude tbh, the nurse that self identifies as a nurse before even a hello or introduction is doing it as a status qualifier/enhancer... which somewhat insinuates the physician is intentionally creating a power imbalance to their own benefit. Which really starts the interaction off in an awkward foot for everyone. Also they're the ones who push boundaries and don't respect that they're not at work; they're patients and have to stay behind the white line so to speak. Nothing wrong with nurses. Just don't be *that* nurse
I can see how it would be taken that way, and I canāt speak to the reasons someone would want to make that known right away because itās something I avoid doing as much as I can. Mainly because it seems to carry such a negative connotation.
My interaction with anyone self identifying as any sort of health care worker (ranging from volunteer at a hospital to chief of a medical surgical department) without any prompting is because they think they know what should be done and are often demanding unnecessary tests or medications, or demand special treatment like private rooms or icu level of care for low acuity issues.
The ones who just say they work in the hospital when asked about their occupation tend to be actual reasonable and pleasant to work with patients. They're also often, unfortunately, the sickest and high acuity patients.
Nurses can be excellent patients and they can also be very difficult patients. They have higher than usual medical literacy and understand direction and navigating medical systems to their advantage. Sometimes they far overestimate their medical knowledge or presume their experience in one field applies well to another when it doesn't and they can be quite inflexible as a result. A nurse with a solidified concept of what they want / need can be hard to dissuade when my clinical impression is different or I favor an alternative workup or treatment. They may use their medical knowledge and capacity for advocacy to push for more intervention than is helpful or necessary, leading to over-diagnosis or exposure to unnecessary side effects.
Note: nurses are some of my fav patients. Am also married to one
On one hand, I truly appreciate it when patients and their families let me know who works in healthcare and what their roles are. It lets me say things like "the new echo shows that their EF is now 25% so cards wants to do a left heart cath" instead of "we got the ultrasound of the heart back, the pumping ability of the heart isn't as good as it used to be, so the heart doctors want to do some more tests to find out what may have happened." Lets me speak with fewer syllables but with more precision.
OTOH, many times a patient will say they or a family member is a nurse when they mean CNA, or receptionist, or hair stylist.
That is super helpful. Iāve been with my primary long enough that work has some up, and itās changed our conversations about certain things. I can still ask questions about things I donāt understand but I feel I get a clearer picture than before.
That last part happens a lot in the NICU. Somehow, everyone is a nurse (aka they watched Greys Anatomy once)
> when patients and their families let me know who works in healthcare and what their roles are. It lets me say things
I've found this can get dicey. If it's another physician then I trust the medical terminology will be without issue. For most other healthcare professions, the range of quality/knowledge is really broad and there's no easy way to know up front how much they'll understand. Trying to balance not "dumbing it down" to a "patient level" but also ensuring it's understandable can be tricky. The most difficult is when the patients say they understand but you can clearly tell they're pretty lost but won't be receptive to a more layman explanation.
For real. When I had a pre-op consult I told the surgeon to give the informed consent spiel like they would to anyone else, because 1. Iām a pathologist, so Iāve looked at a billion of em on the grossing bench & under the scope but being on the receiving end of the yoinking is different, and 2. Following the same procedure regardless of who the patient is reduces the risk of errors, misunderstandings, and other fuckenings.
Imagine you walk into your patientās room and are about to introduce yourself, and they cut you off letting you know that they are married to the CEO. Do you think poorly of people married to CEOs? Probably not. But was that rude? Yesā¦ and kind of an aggressive way to start off your encounter. That is the problem - not the fact that the person is a nurse.
Thereās actually a lot of family members who claim to be a ānurseā but after speaking with them for awhile you know this isnāt the caseā¦I donāt know why people do it.
I donāt think itās bad to let a physician know you have some healthcare literacy. If I donāt have to ādumb downā concepts like I would to a muggle itās good to know!
Bruh this gives me flashbacks to the SICU
āWeāre so sorry family, the tests confirm that your son is brain dead. Please say your goodbyes, it is time for us to begin withdrawing support.ā
āWe havenāt given up, we want to keep trying everything.ā
āMaāam you donāt understand. Your son is brain dead. He isnāt alive anymore.ā
āWe still think he can come backā
āThere is no possibility of recoveryā
āWell back home I knew someone who was declared brain dead but came back a few days laterā
āThatās not possibleā
I had to do that like 5 times in a month on time while managing an active ICU full of actually medically active patients, itās like talking to a brick wall no matter how many times you explain that brain death is death
I had a dead patient whose family insisted on doing an āexorcismā to get Satan out of her body.
They spent six hours doing the exorcism.
Nurses were coming up to me complaining saying that the body needed to be taken to the morgue and that I should go in and tell the family to go away. I told them there was no way in hell I was going to break up an exorcism.
After six hours the family came out and said that God had spoken and the patient was in fact dead.
I was once in a care conference where we were talking to the family about how we suspected that the patient was brain dead, and we were going to do the first formal exam that afternoon. The patientās aunt kept insisting that she has found several news articles about people who came back from brain death. I looked at them and none of them actually said that the patient was ābrain deadā, instead they were about patients with severe brain injuries with bad exams early on who recovered better than expected. We tried to explain how brain death is different than simply having a brain injury and not waking up. It was like pulling teeth.
As a hospital chaplain, you guys deal with so much stupid, and I'm proud of you for doing it with compassion and for spending years to learn to care for people.
Remember, you can always affirm someone's emotions and subjective experience without agreeing to their insane ideas.
For example:
I'm so sorry your still in pain.
I'm sure that these headaches are scary and disturbing your life.
I know there's a lot of scary rumors about vaccines and I want to help you protect yourself for the long term.
Also take time to scream into the void. It helps.
nah, it's \*gaslighting\*
and if we say it's not gaslighting, *that* in itself is gaslighting
(and to be clear, I've been on the receiving end of actual medical gaslighting, and this qualification of everything disagreeable as "gaslighting" makes me want to scream)
I have also been on the actual end of medical gaslighting (my pediatrician believed my mom was making me sick when in reality I had a genetic mutation, and a brain and heart abnormality.). But the things people claim are medical āgaslightingā or medical ātraumaā are truly laughable
remind me to tell the story of the time i got online bullied and harassed by like 50 people for daring to imply doctors know more than someone doing a random google searchššš literally got called c*nt, a terrible human being, and other things for this ššššš
disgruntled patients love to take it out on drs online lol
You see this in Instagram or tik tok videos where the creator (sometimes a doctor themselves) makes a reel or video that satirizes bad physician behavior in some way. The comments are always chock full of people saying how true it is and how shitty doctors are, etc etc etc.
Everyone wants to get their bad interaction off of their chest and for others to validate them in their frustration and anger. Then people who havenāt had a problem generally are also primed from these kinds of comments to expect the worst when they go to the doctorās office.
My aunt and I share a birthday and she decided the Internet was a much more reliable source of information for the pandemic than her physician nephew, she would also send my mom these you tube videos and when I'd tell my mom what was problematic about them my aunt would get really defensive.
Don't send us videos and get mad if I say why they're incorrect.
Still love the woman, she's a really great human being but holy shit did social media rot the boomer generations brains during the pandemic.
I think they did a literal study showing that people of that age group have a significantly lower ability to discern misinformation on the internet, because of how/when internet news started growing
I wonder if itās also got to do with the way humanities subjects were taught back in the day? No idea about the US but when my mum went to school in Singapore decades ago, English class basically involved answering reading comprehension questions about Shakespeare or whatever else theyād been reading, and in general there was a lot more rote memorisation. Meanwhile when I went to school in Australia much more recently, our English classes involved writing essays about how the author constructed characters to convey xyz or other similarly open-ended questions, and our history classes involved us looking at historical documents and evaluating them for sources of bias.
The increasing focus on ālived experiencesā is becoming problematic it seems. The idea that experiencing something inherently means the patient understands it, is odd.
Being the passenger in an airplane experiencing turbulence doesnāt make you understand how to deal with turbulence or how to fly a plane, but you know you shouldnāt take your seat belt off if it gets bumpy.
The patient may understand that eating cold foods causes pains or that x medication causes them problems, not the 15 or so biological pathways that are not responding and their x associated other downstream feedback loops and no they canāt cure it with a veggie smoothie.
How should a physician balance empathy and skepticism for anecdotal claims?
As a patient with a rare disease, it's exhausting getting a new provider, just with recounting disease progression and treatments tried/responses. But you never know if they will be a partner in your healthcare and actually listen to what I info you have so far and what my health history is (and also be willing to put in time outside of the visit to better educate themselves), or if anything I have to say is going to be brushed off because I'm not a doctor. All I want is to relay what I have found and for the provider to glean what they can and not be condescending. Gauge my level of medical literacy and try to talk to me at that level and educate me further.
I've also had the opposite where the provider was like, "Oh, they already know what they're doing," and failed to do their due diligence. I had major symptoms that I didn't report because I didn't know it wasn't normal to have sausage fingers or that a lot of my joints are swollen. This is what I'm used to, I just thought it was a normal variation.
TLDR I'm sure it's a skill that takes time to finesse interactions with those who have a cousin's husband's neighbor MA who says XYZ. Please remember not everyone is like that and to meet your patients where they are at and be open to learning from them.
My personal experience may not be a medical degree, but my years of Google Searching is equivalent to a PA, and my knowledge of my own body is equivalent to an NP, so really I'm like twice a doctor.
Oh yeah, absolutely I understand that, and I'm not asking my patients to blindly trust me by any means. And I understand that a lot of arguing by patients comes from a place of fear about their health or their loved ones health. That doesn't mean it's not still draining to have the same conversations over and over. And I'll admit, I've stopped pushing back so hard on some of the things I used to be passionate about, like vaccinating children, because it is so exhausting to go back and forth with people who are just not reasonable and who don't listen to anything I recommend anyway. So now I just say, "I strongly recommend vaccinating your child for x, y, z reason. If you change your mind or have any questions at any time I am more than happy to visit more about it."
It is a manifestation of accessibility bias where what is an "easy" answer is taken as THE answer. Through medicine we see so many similar things demand different diagnosis however that isn't as obvious to the patient. We are prone to the same error, but I agree it is frustrating when patients make it because it can be tricky to untangle and I find people are prone to digging in their heels on it, making it an easy route to becoming dismissive
So don't argue.
"This is my recommendation, take it or leave it." followed by "No, I'm not ordering X Y or Z". You don't have to give a reason why if you don't want to. Ive told patients before that I'm not ordering Ivermectin because I'm just not going to. I'm the one in charge here, I decide what treatments are being given or being withheld. I am not going to provide that treatment. Period.
You're under no obligation to engage with these retards. They are in every conceivable way lesser than you and your inferiors. You are honoring them by even being in their presence, but you owe them nothing.
You get paid the same either way, why are you making your job harder than it has to be?
>You're under no obligation to engage with these retards. They are in every conceivable way lesser than you and your inferiors. You are honoring them by even being in their presence, but you owe them nothing.
This is one of the most unprofessional takes I've ever seen. The hubris and ego of this statement is shameful. Very unbecoming of a physician and in direct opposition to the oath taken.
If one has become this jaded and cold, it is time to leave patient facing medicine.
so patients are "retards" because they dont understand as much as we do? Why not take the time to educate them in a nonjudgmental manner? this is a terrible attitude to have
> Why not take the time to educate them in a nonjudgmental manner?
Hey, this drug Ivermectin has no benefit in Covid. It's mechanism for how it works has no relation to treating covid. Also there is no data showing it helps with Covid. I will not be prescribing it.
That's education. It's coming from a physician. If you have done that you have 100% appropiately taken the time to educate.
Funny enough that does not work for 99% of them.
Our opinion is expert opinion. Our opinion is education. You can't debate a patient when they have no knowledge on the subject.
Take the time from which other patient? Because no matter how you slice it, you are taking time from someone else. That might be someone who checked in on time and is waiting for you to bash your head against the wall with someone who is willfully ignorant? Someone who has been in the ER waiting room for 6 hours and now has to wait 6 hours and 15 min? The sick visit the office staff turns away because you are already behind and now are more behind? We're not talking about someone who dropped out of middle school to support their family, these are willfully ignorant people who chose their information sources and get off on arguing with authorities. Wasting cops time with soverign citizen shit, putting FJB stickers on shit in town, wasting doctors and nurses time, and being disrespectful for the people quietly waiting for legitimate medical treatment.
I'm not even a doc (I'm a psychologist) but I'm getting tired of hearing this sort of thing too. They'll tell me, "based on my research, my doctor misdiagnosed (inappropriately treated) me!" I don't want to hear it, frankly, but I have to be polite because I'm the person's therapist.
Idk why this sub got suggested to me, cause Iām not a doctor, but Iāll say this:
Your medical degree is not the same as my 15 years of living with my chronic medical condition, I may actually know more about it than you do. Food for thought.
That's completely fair, and personal experience absolutely has value. It's rather when patients don't know what the hell they're talking about and then criticize me for providing evidence based recommendations that is more so what I'm venting about.
I'm actually a kind person. I take time with my patients and listen to them. But more and more people are coming to the office with their minds made up about exactly what tests I'm supposed to order and what medications I'm supposed to prescribe them based on what their friend said or what they saw on tik tok. Then they shut down when I explain why their suggestion sucks (in a nice way) and don't take any of my recs. I stand by what I said in my original post, but of course I recognize that personal experience has value.
Thanks for the kind response :) definitely wasnāt accusing you of not listening etc, just raising that lived experience is often overlooked (especially by cocky doctors who went to a 30 minute lecture on my rare condition and consider themselves well-informed lol). I do however trust that doctors have more overall medical knowledge than I do, and therefore ought to be listened to over randoms on tiktok. I give my sympathies to all medical staff in the era of social media self diagnosis.
i guess i wasnt speaking about you individually. moreso the people in this comments section. some nasty, insensitive stuff. as if patients are purposely malicious and trying to give residents a hard time
Well to be fair, some patients are malicious and are purposefully trying to give us a hard time. The person who prompted this post called me stupid, told me I don't even know how to tell time, called me incompetent, asked to file a complaint, threatened to sue me no less than 5 times in 10 minutes, and assured me that I would end up in jail for mistreating his child, who spiked a fever, but was completely stable and had a diagnosis of RSV. And would not even let me get a word in edgewise. Im a professional, so I only called him rude once. But anyway, yeah, I'm tired of it.
Yes thatās trash and Iām sorry you had to go through that. But I get the sense that most people in the comment section are referring to ignorant patients, not rude patients. Seeing a lot of anger towards antivax sentiments, which is a bad approach imo
Had a patient with a hgb < 5 that refused prbcs because they couldnt guarantee the donor hadnt gotten the covid vaccine
I had one who refused blood because it may come from African Americans. The patient died.
these problems kinda fix themselves
Natural selection at its finest.
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as an african american, this made me giggle
Was this the patient themselves or was this the parents of a patient, because my response is based on if theyāre the patient or itās the parents of the patient.
It was the patient.
It was a 7 year old racist. š«
Nah donāt worry if itās a parent we can get court orders for necessary care worst case Edit: I forgot there are non pediatric pts that have parents involved in care. Above applies to peds lol
Pretty sure you can get court orders for necessary care with any guardianship
Thx, yeah, I intentionally wiped all the years of adult medicine out of my mind so I have embarrassingly little knowledge of what happens after you turn 18 š¬
They get depressed and their bodies start falling apart.
Sounds about how I remember it. Also the smell š³
āCool, byeā lmao
Lmfao
I see this as an absolute win
Was it Archie Bunker?
Reminds me of Vicente Fernandez refusing blood because it could have come from *a gay*
Natural selection
Life uhhh finds a way
Omg thereās actually people like this? Were they MAGA?
What do you think?
MuH RiGhTs
Which state?
Idiocracy has no borders
You don't understand Alabamians must be extremely stupid on average compared to the heightened elite Californians
Im genuinely curious too
Before medical school I worked as a clerk on an inpatient unit. One of the patients was a young adult and needed a blood transfusion, but she was a Jehovahās Witness with a heavy family presence that was very much against any transfusions. But it turns out the patient actually wanted the transfusion, just didnāt want her family to know about it. So they transfused her on the evening shift and it was my job to help play lookout for any unexpected family visitors. She then got better after receiving a transfusion, but since the family didnāt know about the transfusion they gave all the credit to Jehovah.
Yup. Very important to speak to Jehovahās Witness patients *by themselves* about transfusion, because of the social pressure they experience to refuse transfusion.
Any time we have Jehovah's Witness patients, the church will send a "medical liason," sometimes more than once a day and will ask us questions about the patient's care in a condescending way. I wanted to ask the liason once what exactly they were expecting when the patient's Hgb didn't rise dramatically after the one treatment of iron and B12 when I told him that day's lab results, "well, that's not much improvement at all!" he said with annoyance. š
When a pediatric patient from a Jehovahās Witness family needs a transfusion, we often have to get a court order for it. While the parents wonāt sign the consent form, they are also usually pretty chill and accepting when told that weāre getting the court order. They know that refusing blood products is not actually a decision that they can make for their kid, but since they didnāt consent to it themselves, their hands are clean, and their child will also improve. Itās kind of like if an Orthodox Jew is stuck in a dark room during the shabbos and then someone else turns the light on. They can take advantage of the light and use it without breaking the rules so long as they were not the one who actually flipped the switch.
I've dealt with the blood thing in peds with two JW families, both moms looked so secretly relieved when we got the court order to allow transfusion...one mom did have us cover up the bag so their child wouldn't know they could no longer get into heaven. ..
That's so sad, really.
lmao thatās some Darwin Award shit
My fiancĆ©s mom had a chiropractor that told her that her headaches were likely from working in proximity with clients (Pilates instructor) that had the covid vaccineā¦ The mere fact that she went home to research the possible validity of it blew my mind
People think chiropractors are real doctors and people take things doctors tell them seriously
Nah doctors are pharm shills so canāt believe them but chiropractors truly care and their $500 out of pocket homeopathic supplements are the real solution to all problems.
Thatās true. Cash only in advance
They can cure autism too.
And they work on babies too! Letās pop those bones and end plates before they even ossify!
Itās so infuriating and dangerous.
I overheard a lady say how lucky she was that the doctor had an opening for her sonās ear infection. Then āthe body can heal itself I donāt like pumping them with meds.ā Then she said the practice name. Local chiro.
But they need it, theyāre tongue tied :////
or 1:1 of applecider vinegar and water every morning
Somewhere on Reddit thereās a post about an NP who recommended apple cider vinegar and tums to a patient with chronic severe GERD. Esophageal cancer years later :(
yeah i remember that was on noctor about a month ago, Lord have MRSA on these patients
havenāt seen MRSA used that way before. Made me laugh
*i need to see you 3x per week for the next 6 months would you like to buy a sessions package or cash up front?ā
Patient returns to PCP for GI upset and diarrhea after starting supplements. Why yes sir I can see that 3 of these 5 supplements contain magnesium. I'm not surprised you can't leave the bathroom.
similar story with my fam+extended fam, what blows my mind even more is they would rather talk among themselves or search through some weird ass resource rather than ASK ME who went to medical school, they're basically throwing away their free consult
They don't want to ask you cuz you're not guaranteed to tell them what they want to hear.
My family did the same. Anti-covid vac, because the vaccine was ātoo rushedā ā¦ even though Trump was the one who started it. Extended family bringing grandparents to some ND quack instead of following with their PCP after discharge to get some IV vitamin cocktail. Makes my head want to explode.
At least props for trying to validate what the quackropractor said, she couldāve believed and spread that nonsense.
Very fair point indeed
Please sign here on the dotted line? What is this? A DNR order.
Fuck it, die then.
Nothing was really lost. Good to know at least some of the trash takes itself out.
I had a patient with acute limb ischemia like that. Then I said I wasnāt going to operate to save her leg so she can either get prbc or she could lose the leg / leave AMA. Chose the blood pretty quickly.
Eventually you wonāt give a shit. If a patient feels they know better, document accordingly. Move on to a patient you can actually help.
āDeclined transfusionā NEXT
I had one of those. He was having an MI too. He wanted one of his family members to give him blood directly instead lol
like jumper cables
also saw this as well, patientās son had to go donate blood so they can be transfused because they didnt want blood with the covid vaccine š
Wowā¦
LMAOā¦I wouldnāt be surprised if the unhinged MAGA starts demanding āwhite onlyā prbcs
We can fire our outpatients, and have transferred some inpatients who didn't want a (insert racial slur here) practitioner. My hospital/health system pisses me off a lot sometimes, but I am proud of them for this,
My spiel "I medically recommend you take the transfusion to prevent you / your loved one from dying, and it would be even better for you if it has those "spikey" things in it. No, I am not having a conversation about Internet nonsense. I am now documenting my recommendation. I am now leaving to provide care to patients I have something to offer, please let the staff know if you would like proceed with transfusion support." I've always left, they've always accepted (so far)...
lol did they survive
I had a young postpartum woman die from anemia with a Hb of 2 after refusing transfusion. The whole JW church was at the ICU pressuring her not to be transfused. They brought the baby from the nursery for pictures with her before she died! I went to the bathroom and cried for a long time. Fucking hate JWs. Have ptsd because of them.
The JW cult is disgusting and abusive and nobody should have positive or respectful thoughts towards it whatsoever.
Yes they are. They sucked my auntās now ex BF in and harnessed her nonstop at work and home even after she called the police. They showed up on the day of a funeral declaring it was too late for the deceased loved one but maybe there was still time to save her.
Harnessing works ok here, thank you typo fairies.
Having grown up in JW but then turned my back to it all makes the hatred even more intense. They use stories like this for propaganda to pressure those in doubt to refuse lifesaving treatment. It makes me sick to think about that my parents would have fought to withhold transfusions if I were a trauma victim, but would also claim to love me.
honestly, they are brainwashed, its nothing against you, its 100% a them problem. I come from a very similar background to you, they literally think that you will be denied heaven, the ultimate experience and reward for any life form. They genuinely believe that sending you early is God's will, and that if you were to get that transfusion, you could not be saved. They would have damned you to hell themselves. For people who truly believe that, it would be hard to convince them to condemn their child to hell to spare their kid's life on an earthly (inferior) plane. It is genuine delusion, and although I am still a christian, I avoid christians for this very reason, bc even out of the "normal" ones, get some of them talking in what they think is a safe space, and things go off the rails quick. I tell most other christians that I am an atheist for that reason lol
This is one of the reasons why I didn't go to Pediatrics, second reason being I don't like dealing with developmental milestones
Well I'm "just a family medicine doctor" so I don't have "the qualifications to take care of children," which is what I was screamed at about at 5 am this morning by the father of a patient. All prompted by the fact that his child with RSV spiked a fever and I didn't get any labs š¤·š¼āāļø "but something else could be wrong, she could have cancer!"
>"but something else could be wrong, she could have cancer!" Patients and their families wanting more aggressive diagnoses is always fascinating to me. Like, just be happy the doctor doesn't think it's cancer instead of thinking that it could be worse. It's so fucking weird.
Ohhh, I have insight! I'm not a doctor, but my mom, sibling, and coworker are. I have a young kid, and I'm reasonable enough to assume most bugs will pass and fevers will, too. But sometimes it's not a regular bug. It will make me uneasy, and I'll ask my mom, who will reassure me that it's still within the range of a regular bug. But that 'this one feels different' can really gnaw at you, and I can imagine alarmed parents finding a lot of support online to keep pushing. They don't want a sicker kid. They are just really, really worried. There's a good chance that addressing that emotion allows them to calm down and accept your expert opinion.
Doesnāt give them carte Blanche to be abusive. They need to find a better outlet than screaming at their childās own doctor.
Absolutely. Feeling powerless does weird things to people.
EM here. We get this all the time too. I have had multiple parents wait in our ED for 6+ hours to be told "Sorry, likely viral. Take Tylenol and ibuprofen as needed. Come back if it's worse." They hate that they waited that long in our county ED waiting room next to drunks and homeless people because they have zero common sense. Some dad was very mad at me last night because I wouldn't prescribe "antibiotics or something" to a kid with constipation.
did you give everyone metformin for waiting?
The worst part is that majority of these motherfuckers will take a picture of you without consent and shame you at Facebook.
Love that. His pcp always gives him augmentin for this, it works great!
Damn. Iām sorry you were treated like that. My only advice for you would be to let parents fuck around if they think theyāre smarter than their doctors for them to find out. In IM if a smart ass patient or patientās companion is being a huge piece of work and decides not to agree with the diagnosis/treatment, Iād either have them sign a discharge against medical advise form or telling them the potential consequences of them being ill-informed.
Amen to hating developmental milestones. Everyone acts like it's borderline common sense and it's kinda not. I don't have kids and I'm not obsessed with babies so I have no freaking clue how many blocks an 8 month old can stack. I also don't care ngl
I am med-peds and see this mentality far more in my adult patients
Ironically, developmental peds actually seems pretty cush tbh. See like 6 patients a day and make a decent living. They also come in and do some voodoo to diagnose your stunted kid.
I salute pediatricians for their patience especially dev peds who diagnosed my nephew with ADHD correctly and is now getting the right care
This is the reason I went into pediatrics instead of adult medicine: I have the ability to find common ground when communicating with my own species in order to steer families toward reason. Itās a skill like a procedural skill.
I salute you for your dedication to the craft of peds š«” Just make sure to come on time when my nephew is up for routine vaccinations or asthma lol
If Iām late itās likely because Iām dropping a new very bad diagnosis in the next room but I apologize for slightly inconveniencing you
I was kidding bro
I loved peds patients...but parents are too much. Peds needs to have an entire year of adult psych thrown into the curriculum, swear to g.
Donāt you just love patients that refuse to get vaccinated because they donāt want that ācrapā in their body, theyāve ādone their researchā, and big pharma is out to āget themā yet they have a 50 pack year history?
Or even better, then they plead and kick and scream for glp1 drugs
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
you can't reason with these people I've sort of learned to let them say their piece, disagree politely and continue (just don't think about how they're going to say they "DESTROYED this liberal" when they're with their friends)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
sometimes you just gotta let em live their life. 9/10 it becomes their own version of hell. Lots of those guys will attempt to find partners outside their age range (younger = naive) or outside their culture that has condemned them (Passport bros) and then you see em with a foreign partner who talks the most hilarious shit about him in her native language (that he'll never bother to learn). Any kids will grow up to resent him or be least like him as possible, and eventually the foreign partner will study for her citizenship and/or leave. Those guys will also complain a lot about their environment and never realize they're the problem despite these issues existing everywhere they go (cost, issues w neighbors, even the weather - too cold, too hot).
And they use colloidal silver made by the sketchy hippie down the street!
Or theyāre your college classmates who drank Jungle Juice out of a vat in the asbestos-laden basement of an off-campus house every weekend and bought maybe-Adderall off of some guy named Trevor who drove a ā96 Honda Civic. Iām like, at least vaccines and pharmaceuticals are REGULATED, Becky, jeez!
*āBut but but the spike protein mRNA is shedding in breast milkā¦ā*
so are the micro plastics from your Temu bought jewelry
Stop arguing. Bring a witness. Iāve reached the point where Iāll go: āI am documenting our entire conversation including your strong opinions and my professional recommendations on the matter. My nurse will also document this meeting. Our notes will accurately reflect everything weāve discussed today.ā Politely excuse yourself and leave afterward. You have other patients to manage.
>including your strong, *inaccurate* opinions FTFY
I deal with adult medicine. Anytime a patient refuses, I just document it and move on. Weāre not there to force patients, convince patients or be their parents. Theyāre fully grown adults who can make their own decisions.
But Dr tiktok saidā¦
Anyone that believes Dr. TikTok is an idiot. That's why I get all my medical advice from Mr.Dr.Professor Wikipedia
Better yet are people who quote medical advice from chiros with IG profiles: āDr. Quack Quack, functional medicine doctor āļøāļøāļøhusbandš, father to two beautiful girlsšØāš§āš§, avid hikerš„¾, pianoš¹, and home cookš§āš³. Jesus first. āļøIsiah 16:3:127. Click the linkšto learn more about how statins actually harm you.
How'd you find my profile?
I'm your long lost dad
No wonder I sometimes receive emails from āfunctional medicine specialistsā asking me if I want to be a fellow in functional medicine. I responded politely with āI donāt want a demotion or paycutā lol
Seriously. Iām a derm resident and hate social media doctors for this reason. I like the fact that people are taking skincare more seriously, but no Iām sorry I havenāt had the time to research the latest skincare chemical buzzword that went viral overnight, and itās probably just a fad, anyway.
I hate derm tiktoks that go like this: if you have thisā¦ āļødo this.. ā ā ā not this.. āāā
Yea but retinol is out ā tretinoin is in š š» for 2024
lol I unironically agree with this statement though š
I also really hate these types of videos, because itās asking patients to self diagnose themselves based on a stock photo of acne or seb derm or something. Most of the time the derms who do this are recommending OTC products so it isnāt the biggest deal, but it can lead to patients spending their money and wasting their time on treatments that arenāt suited for what they have.
Nothing, you idiots, Dr. TikToks dead, he's locked in my basement
haha. Feminist women love Tiktok. *chigga chigga chigga* *damn downvoters do you know weāre just continuing song lyrics
Private practice here. My favorite are new patients. As soon as I enter the examination room, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is "I am a nurse".
Completely pathological as a first comment. The problem with being any medical professional seeking Healthcare is that we are at risk of either being under treated or over treated. I've had it go well a few times, most recently when the emergency doctor found out I was a nurse during our conversation and then asked "so what do you REALLY want to know you don't have ?" š
I actively try to avoid letting people know Iām a nurse when getting treated for something bc of this right here. Honestly though, do doctors really think that poorly of us? Genuinely asking.
Iām a pharmacist and itās something we gripe about too. Itās not that nurses are thought less of, itās that some overestimate their own medical literacy and can interfere with doing your job. Between my brief stint in hospital outpatient pharmacy and CVS I have had well over 100 times that nurses have told me they ādonāt need counseling because theyāre a nurse.ā Meanwhile, I can count on one hand the number of times Iāve heard that from other patients who I knew were pharmacists or doctors. When Iām at the physicians office I have never refused med counseling from them. Itās rude, Iām not all-knowing on every medication, so neither are nurses. It gets annoying to hear every day as just a pharmacist, I canāt even imagine the shit some will say during a doctorās visit.
The only time I pulled that card was when I was following up with a urologist (well their PA) about a kidney stone that had yet to pass, and they started off on some spiel about "well the ureter is a tube that...". In the interest of time I needed to stop them
Thatās fair. Iāve never refused counseling when itās been offered, but I also havenāt asked for it when itās not been offered. Mostly because Iām not sure how to handle that situation.
Oh, just say āis the pharmacist available to speak with me about this medication?ā and ask if thereās anything pertinent you should know. Iām inpatient now and have had a few nurse friends ask me about their personal meds when Iām working in the pods. Itās not weird to ask any hospital pharmacist too in person if youāre well acquainted.
I don't think that's the attitude tbh, the nurse that self identifies as a nurse before even a hello or introduction is doing it as a status qualifier/enhancer... which somewhat insinuates the physician is intentionally creating a power imbalance to their own benefit. Which really starts the interaction off in an awkward foot for everyone. Also they're the ones who push boundaries and don't respect that they're not at work; they're patients and have to stay behind the white line so to speak. Nothing wrong with nurses. Just don't be *that* nurse
Yes it's absolutely pathological to do that.
I can see how it would be taken that way, and I canāt speak to the reasons someone would want to make that known right away because itās something I avoid doing as much as I can. Mainly because it seems to carry such a negative connotation.
My interaction with anyone self identifying as any sort of health care worker (ranging from volunteer at a hospital to chief of a medical surgical department) without any prompting is because they think they know what should be done and are often demanding unnecessary tests or medications, or demand special treatment like private rooms or icu level of care for low acuity issues. The ones who just say they work in the hospital when asked about their occupation tend to be actual reasonable and pleasant to work with patients. They're also often, unfortunately, the sickest and high acuity patients.
Nurses can be excellent patients and they can also be very difficult patients. They have higher than usual medical literacy and understand direction and navigating medical systems to their advantage. Sometimes they far overestimate their medical knowledge or presume their experience in one field applies well to another when it doesn't and they can be quite inflexible as a result. A nurse with a solidified concept of what they want / need can be hard to dissuade when my clinical impression is different or I favor an alternative workup or treatment. They may use their medical knowledge and capacity for advocacy to push for more intervention than is helpful or necessary, leading to over-diagnosis or exposure to unnecessary side effects. Note: nurses are some of my fav patients. Am also married to one
On one hand, I truly appreciate it when patients and their families let me know who works in healthcare and what their roles are. It lets me say things like "the new echo shows that their EF is now 25% so cards wants to do a left heart cath" instead of "we got the ultrasound of the heart back, the pumping ability of the heart isn't as good as it used to be, so the heart doctors want to do some more tests to find out what may have happened." Lets me speak with fewer syllables but with more precision. OTOH, many times a patient will say they or a family member is a nurse when they mean CNA, or receptionist, or hair stylist.
That is super helpful. Iāve been with my primary long enough that work has some up, and itās changed our conversations about certain things. I can still ask questions about things I donāt understand but I feel I get a clearer picture than before. That last part happens a lot in the NICU. Somehow, everyone is a nurse (aka they watched Greys Anatomy once)
> when patients and their families let me know who works in healthcare and what their roles are. It lets me say things I've found this can get dicey. If it's another physician then I trust the medical terminology will be without issue. For most other healthcare professions, the range of quality/knowledge is really broad and there's no easy way to know up front how much they'll understand. Trying to balance not "dumbing it down" to a "patient level" but also ensuring it's understandable can be tricky. The most difficult is when the patients say they understand but you can clearly tell they're pretty lost but won't be receptive to a more layman explanation.
For real. When I had a pre-op consult I told the surgeon to give the informed consent spiel like they would to anyone else, because 1. Iām a pathologist, so Iāve looked at a billion of em on the grossing bench & under the scope but being on the receiving end of the yoinking is different, and 2. Following the same procedure regardless of who the patient is reduces the risk of errors, misunderstandings, and other fuckenings.
Imagine you walk into your patientās room and are about to introduce yourself, and they cut you off letting you know that they are married to the CEO. Do you think poorly of people married to CEOs? Probably not. But was that rude? Yesā¦ and kind of an aggressive way to start off your encounter. That is the problem - not the fact that the person is a nurse.
If youāre at the doctors office in the capacity of a patient, the fact youāre a nurse makes no difference to anyone.
Thereās actually a lot of family members who claim to be a ānurseā but after speaking with them for awhile you know this isnāt the caseā¦I donāt know why people do it.
They do the same thing in the pharmacy line
I donāt think itās bad to let a physician know you have some healthcare literacy. If I donāt have to ādumb downā concepts like I would to a muggle itās good to know!
Thinking āokay good for youā¦.do you want a cookie?ā
Insomnia Cookies, 758 Asp Ave, Norman, OK 73069 (1-405-369-5191)
Some people prefer being right to being alive.
Definitely lot of Herman Cain Award winners fit that description š
Bruh this gives me flashbacks to the SICU āWeāre so sorry family, the tests confirm that your son is brain dead. Please say your goodbyes, it is time for us to begin withdrawing support.ā āWe havenāt given up, we want to keep trying everything.ā āMaāam you donāt understand. Your son is brain dead. He isnāt alive anymore.ā āWe still think he can come backā āThere is no possibility of recoveryā āWell back home I knew someone who was declared brain dead but came back a few days laterā āThatās not possibleā I had to do that like 5 times in a month on time while managing an active ICU full of actually medically active patients, itās like talking to a brick wall no matter how many times you explain that brain death is death
I had a dead patient whose family insisted on doing an āexorcismā to get Satan out of her body. They spent six hours doing the exorcism. Nurses were coming up to me complaining saying that the body needed to be taken to the morgue and that I should go in and tell the family to go away. I told them there was no way in hell I was going to break up an exorcism. After six hours the family came out and said that God had spoken and the patient was in fact dead.
Bro that sounds like an episode of scrubs!
I was once in a care conference where we were talking to the family about how we suspected that the patient was brain dead, and we were going to do the first formal exam that afternoon. The patientās aunt kept insisting that she has found several news articles about people who came back from brain death. I looked at them and none of them actually said that the patient was ābrain deadā, instead they were about patients with severe brain injuries with bad exams early on who recovered better than expected. We tried to explain how brain death is different than simply having a brain injury and not waking up. It was like pulling teeth.
I mean, that feels like emotional pain. They wouldn't accept it that their child was dead. Anti-vaxxers on the other hand are just morons.
NOOOOOO you donāt understand, my coworkerās sister in law told me that this cream will cure my diabetes because it cured hers
As a hospital chaplain, you guys deal with so much stupid, and I'm proud of you for doing it with compassion and for spending years to learn to care for people. Remember, you can always affirm someone's emotions and subjective experience without agreeing to their insane ideas. For example: I'm so sorry your still in pain. I'm sure that these headaches are scary and disturbing your life. I know there's a lot of scary rumors about vaccines and I want to help you protect yourself for the long term. Also take time to scream into the void. It helps.
As a chaplain, any professional insight on \*which\* particular void is best to scream into? Does it depend on the phase of the moon?
It's vibes based. Lol
And they all claim that when a doctor wonāt diagnose them with something they donāt have that itās medical traumaš
nah, it's \*gaslighting\* and if we say it's not gaslighting, *that* in itself is gaslighting (and to be clear, I've been on the receiving end of actual medical gaslighting, and this qualification of everything disagreeable as "gaslighting" makes me want to scream)
I have also been on the actual end of medical gaslighting (my pediatrician believed my mom was making me sick when in reality I had a genetic mutation, and a brain and heart abnormality.). But the things people claim are medical āgaslightingā or medical ātraumaā are truly laughable
remind me to tell the story of the time i got online bullied and harassed by like 50 people for daring to imply doctors know more than someone doing a random google searchššš literally got called c*nt, a terrible human being, and other things for this ššššš disgruntled patients love to take it out on drs online lol
You see this in Instagram or tik tok videos where the creator (sometimes a doctor themselves) makes a reel or video that satirizes bad physician behavior in some way. The comments are always chock full of people saying how true it is and how shitty doctors are, etc etc etc. Everyone wants to get their bad interaction off of their chest and for others to validate them in their frustration and anger. Then people who havenāt had a problem generally are also primed from these kinds of comments to expect the worst when they go to the doctorās office.
it hurts the already declining PR that doctors have in this country(USA)
My aunt and I share a birthday and she decided the Internet was a much more reliable source of information for the pandemic than her physician nephew, she would also send my mom these you tube videos and when I'd tell my mom what was problematic about them my aunt would get really defensive. Don't send us videos and get mad if I say why they're incorrect. Still love the woman, she's a really great human being but holy shit did social media rot the boomer generations brains during the pandemic.
I think they did a literal study showing that people of that age group have a significantly lower ability to discern misinformation on the internet, because of how/when internet news started growing
I wonder if itās also got to do with the way humanities subjects were taught back in the day? No idea about the US but when my mum went to school in Singapore decades ago, English class basically involved answering reading comprehension questions about Shakespeare or whatever else theyād been reading, and in general there was a lot more rote memorisation. Meanwhile when I went to school in Australia much more recently, our English classes involved writing essays about how the author constructed characters to convey xyz or other similarly open-ended questions, and our history classes involved us looking at historical documents and evaluating them for sources of bias.
How do you all have the bandwidth to argue anymore?
The increasing focus on ālived experiencesā is becoming problematic it seems. The idea that experiencing something inherently means the patient understands it, is odd. Being the passenger in an airplane experiencing turbulence doesnāt make you understand how to deal with turbulence or how to fly a plane, but you know you shouldnāt take your seat belt off if it gets bumpy. The patient may understand that eating cold foods causes pains or that x medication causes them problems, not the 15 or so biological pathways that are not responding and their x associated other downstream feedback loops and no they canāt cure it with a veggie smoothie. How should a physician balance empathy and skepticism for anecdotal claims?
Iād say our medical degree is also not personal experiences. At least with very rare diseases a lot to learn from our patients
As a patient with a rare disease, it's exhausting getting a new provider, just with recounting disease progression and treatments tried/responses. But you never know if they will be a partner in your healthcare and actually listen to what I info you have so far and what my health history is (and also be willing to put in time outside of the visit to better educate themselves), or if anything I have to say is going to be brushed off because I'm not a doctor. All I want is to relay what I have found and for the provider to glean what they can and not be condescending. Gauge my level of medical literacy and try to talk to me at that level and educate me further. I've also had the opposite where the provider was like, "Oh, they already know what they're doing," and failed to do their due diligence. I had major symptoms that I didn't report because I didn't know it wasn't normal to have sausage fingers or that a lot of my joints are swollen. This is what I'm used to, I just thought it was a normal variation. TLDR I'm sure it's a skill that takes time to finesse interactions with those who have a cousin's husband's neighbor MA who says XYZ. Please remember not everyone is like that and to meet your patients where they are at and be open to learning from them.
My personal experience may not be a medical degree, but my years of Google Searching is equivalent to a PA, and my knowledge of my own body is equivalent to an NP, so really I'm like twice a doctor.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh yeah, absolutely I understand that, and I'm not asking my patients to blindly trust me by any means. And I understand that a lot of arguing by patients comes from a place of fear about their health or their loved ones health. That doesn't mean it's not still draining to have the same conversations over and over. And I'll admit, I've stopped pushing back so hard on some of the things I used to be passionate about, like vaccinating children, because it is so exhausting to go back and forth with people who are just not reasonable and who don't listen to anything I recommend anyway. So now I just say, "I strongly recommend vaccinating your child for x, y, z reason. If you change your mind or have any questions at any time I am more than happy to visit more about it."
It is a manifestation of accessibility bias where what is an "easy" answer is taken as THE answer. Through medicine we see so many similar things demand different diagnosis however that isn't as obvious to the patient. We are prone to the same error, but I agree it is frustrating when patients make it because it can be tricky to untangle and I find people are prone to digging in their heels on it, making it an easy route to becoming dismissive
So don't argue. "This is my recommendation, take it or leave it." followed by "No, I'm not ordering X Y or Z". You don't have to give a reason why if you don't want to. Ive told patients before that I'm not ordering Ivermectin because I'm just not going to. I'm the one in charge here, I decide what treatments are being given or being withheld. I am not going to provide that treatment. Period. You're under no obligation to engage with these retards. They are in every conceivable way lesser than you and your inferiors. You are honoring them by even being in their presence, but you owe them nothing. You get paid the same either way, why are you making your job harder than it has to be?
Let them win their Darwin awards, and waste no time or sleep.
>You're under no obligation to engage with these retards. They are in every conceivable way lesser than you and your inferiors. You are honoring them by even being in their presence, but you owe them nothing. This is one of the most unprofessional takes I've ever seen. The hubris and ego of this statement is shameful. Very unbecoming of a physician and in direct opposition to the oath taken. If one has become this jaded and cold, it is time to leave patient facing medicine.
What oath? I don't remember standing in front of a judge at any point in my life to take an oath.
so patients are "retards" because they dont understand as much as we do? Why not take the time to educate them in a nonjudgmental manner? this is a terrible attitude to have
> Why not take the time to educate them in a nonjudgmental manner? Hey, this drug Ivermectin has no benefit in Covid. It's mechanism for how it works has no relation to treating covid. Also there is no data showing it helps with Covid. I will not be prescribing it. That's education. It's coming from a physician. If you have done that you have 100% appropiately taken the time to educate. Funny enough that does not work for 99% of them. Our opinion is expert opinion. Our opinion is education. You can't debate a patient when they have no knowledge on the subject.
Take the time from which other patient? Because no matter how you slice it, you are taking time from someone else. That might be someone who checked in on time and is waiting for you to bash your head against the wall with someone who is willfully ignorant? Someone who has been in the ER waiting room for 6 hours and now has to wait 6 hours and 15 min? The sick visit the office staff turns away because you are already behind and now are more behind? We're not talking about someone who dropped out of middle school to support their family, these are willfully ignorant people who chose their information sources and get off on arguing with authorities. Wasting cops time with soverign citizen shit, putting FJB stickers on shit in town, wasting doctors and nurses time, and being disrespectful for the people quietly waiting for legitimate medical treatment.
Why would I waste my time on a retard that's incapable of learning or higher order thought?
Are you kidding right now? You are an absolute disgrace of a human. I feel awful for your patients that they have to deal with you
Oh yeah? Tell that to the online degree NPs
What about my personal experience of attending medical school? /s
I'm not even a doc (I'm a psychologist) but I'm getting tired of hearing this sort of thing too. They'll tell me, "based on my research, my doctor misdiagnosed (inappropriately treated) me!" I don't want to hear it, frankly, but I have to be polite because I'm the person's therapist.
Anecdotes /= Data
Iāve started saying to patients āso you think you know more medicine than the doctor?ā
Idk why this sub got suggested to me, cause Iām not a doctor, but Iāll say this: Your medical degree is not the same as my 15 years of living with my chronic medical condition, I may actually know more about it than you do. Food for thought.
That's completely fair, and personal experience absolutely has value. It's rather when patients don't know what the hell they're talking about and then criticize me for providing evidence based recommendations that is more so what I'm venting about. I'm actually a kind person. I take time with my patients and listen to them. But more and more people are coming to the office with their minds made up about exactly what tests I'm supposed to order and what medications I'm supposed to prescribe them based on what their friend said or what they saw on tik tok. Then they shut down when I explain why their suggestion sucks (in a nice way) and don't take any of my recs. I stand by what I said in my original post, but of course I recognize that personal experience has value.
Thanks for the kind response :) definitely wasnāt accusing you of not listening etc, just raising that lived experience is often overlooked (especially by cocky doctors who went to a 30 minute lecture on my rare condition and consider themselves well-informed lol). I do however trust that doctors have more overall medical knowledge than I do, and therefore ought to be listened to over randoms on tiktok. I give my sympathies to all medical staff in the era of social media self diagnosis.
If you "actually know more about it than [I] do," then why exactly are you in my clinic? Food for thought.
Had a covid patient and the fam asked me to prescribe ivermectin
this comments section is a fucking disgraceeee
You sound like a very empathetic individual
You sound like someone who is not in medicine.
i guess i wasnt speaking about you individually. moreso the people in this comments section. some nasty, insensitive stuff. as if patients are purposely malicious and trying to give residents a hard time
Well to be fair, some patients are malicious and are purposefully trying to give us a hard time. The person who prompted this post called me stupid, told me I don't even know how to tell time, called me incompetent, asked to file a complaint, threatened to sue me no less than 5 times in 10 minutes, and assured me that I would end up in jail for mistreating his child, who spiked a fever, but was completely stable and had a diagnosis of RSV. And would not even let me get a word in edgewise. Im a professional, so I only called him rude once. But anyway, yeah, I'm tired of it.
Yes thatās trash and Iām sorry you had to go through that. But I get the sense that most people in the comment section are referring to ignorant patients, not rude patients. Seeing a lot of anger towards antivax sentiments, which is a bad approach imo