Doctors are bad patients?

Question

well my aunt is a doctor and she was just talking about it...

so do u think doctors are horrible patients because thay know every single thing that may go wrong?

Answer 1

I would have to say they make excellent patients, at least in my experience. They question things (appropriately), they worry about things just like other human beings (perhaps more), and understand how nurses (and others) contribute to their care. They are highly intolerant of carelessness, but then so am I.

Ask me about nurses as patients :) . Different story.

Answer 2

They can be the worst. They can also be the best. It depends on personality, and whether they can switch roles.  They never, however, lack assertiveness.

Answer 3

i dont think they are bad patients;just smarter ones. tthey challenge their own doctors with thier own questions,opininions and decisions. plus doctors have different competencies, for example, a GP who is a patient with nerve problems will have to go with the neurologists advice because he is not an expert in that field.

Answer 4

I'd say, yes.

While the fact that being a doctor means you already have suspicions as to what you have, you can give the treating doctor some headaches when you look at lab results and x-rays and your opinion differs from his. And yes, there's a lot of doctors that are pompous know-it-all's that are jerks with everyone. Believe me, there's a lot of doctors out there that act just like Dr. Kelso.

Other times, you're so used to never taking care of your own health in med school (no time, no energy, too busy with everything else going on), some of these bad habits probably just become a part of you because you needed to act like that to survive the career. Half of my classmates are compulsive smokers and over half of them get drunk every weekend if possible. It's a bit hard to get a person who's so stubborn in not taking care of themselves while they are still healthy to take care of theselves when they are sick.

As for me, I'm quite a crappy patient, but mostly for reason #2. *nervous laughs*