55 Surprising Patient Habits That Actually Make Care Harder for Doctors and Nurses
ZweitenMal:
As a patient, I learned the best thing I can do is be calm and cooperative with techs. I’ve seen people really light up when I ask them to tell me more about what they are doing. They are not allowed to diagnose or really even describe what a test is showing, but I’ve found they will let you look if you ask nicely. MUGA scans are incredibly cool. And it’s nice to get a peek at your PET so you can prepare yourself for the wait to get the full report.
So one of the most common thing patients often do, thinking it helps, is self diagnose and come in completely attached to that diagnosis. It’s totally understandable, people Google their symptoms because they’re worried, but when someone is fixed on one idea, it can make it harder for doctors and nurses to properly assess the situation with an open mind…
swvagirl:
The flip side to that is that women will sometimes go to a lot of doctors for pain or something else and get told its anxiety, or we should lose weight. So we turn to Google to help. Granted we should take it with a grain of salt, but knowing possibilities of potential diagnosis is important too. Now if you can sit down and say definitively no its not X because you don’t have Y then great.
Charming_Garbage_161:
The ONLY reason I was diagnosed with endometriosis was bc I had a hernia repair and they saw my intestines were stuck to my abdomen and the hernia, so they took a sample and tested it. This was after years of painful periods and basically hemorrhaging every month if not twice a month. Within the year I went to a specialist and got my uterus yeeted. It doesn’t solve the problem 100% but at least I feel less sick every month bc I was bleeding an oz about every hour and ten days straight.
This is gonna sound awful but I’m in the ER, we have a ton of stuff to do and patients will come in telling us everything under the sun. We don’t really have time to sit there for 20 minutes listening to every little side effect and history unless we ask for it specifically.
owlanalogies:
As a patient, esp. a woman, this one is tough because we’re often misdiagnosed for lack of context or have symptoms ignored for years.
Relevant_Struggle:
This is my mom
She’s 80 and in a decline. She wants to explain everything in detail about everything. I try to stream line her as best as I can, but unfortunately, she is a talker. I went with her to get GP recently and I stopped her like 3 times from rambling. She has fallen. I mentioned she wasn’t using her cane. Dr told her to use the cane. She starts going on about how her left leg is weaker and if she builds it up it will get better. I cut her off. With mom use the cane
I’m a dental hygienist. This is a light hearted one but when patients turn their head super far to the side facing you as soon as they lay their head back.
Yea, we can’t see when you do that haha. If you’re reading this, please wait for the hygienist or dentist to direct you how to turn your head. Don’t guess because that makes our jobs a lot harder (we can’t see).
lawl-butts:
I want you guys to move my head like a mannequin, I’m tired of this gentle “please move to the left. A little more, nope, a little back, yep there”
Move my head and I’ll keep it there.
I feel like the last few times I’ve been to the dentist it’s been this way, just manhandle me please
NieceyBabe:
Dental hygienist here. I absolutely love what I do and I enjoy getting to know my patients on a personal level. But it’s the folks who think that I’m a licensed therapist and they want to use my time to dump on me every single little event that has happened in their lives over the past six months. There is so much that I need to do in my hour that I have with you that I can’t spend it all with you chatting me up the entire time. And I know that I can just ‘shove my hands in your mouth’ and keep you from talking, but some folks just truly don’t get it and will continue to chat the entire time.
Another peeve of mine is after I’ve spent the better part of a hour discussing dental needs with you are the patients who wait for the doctor to come in for the exam at the end and all of a sudden they want to tell them about a tooth that’s been bothering them on and off for months now or a weird sore that comes and goes. When I ask specific questions throughout the cleaning about things like that and a patient doesn’t say anything, it makes me look like I haven’t done my job at all.
Oh, and medications. When I ask you what medications you take and you respond with ‘nothing that affects my mouth or nothing you need to know about’, that’s complete bullshit. I absolutely need to know your health history because the vast majority of Rx meds can have effects on your oral health, or the types of anesthetics that we use in the office. Men are the worst at this because they don’t want to disclose they take viagra or cialis or meds for their prostate. Get over it. We don’t judge you for it.
I have way more things I can list about my career that I love versus what I hate, so I’m grateful for that. But please, before you come in for your dental cleaning, brush and floss your fucking teeth. Don’t tell me on the way over to the office that you just ate chicken curry in your car and you figured that I could ‘just get it all out’. I will absolutely 100% judge you for that.
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