“Stop complaining, it’s just a headache.”
“There’s really nothing you can do about headache/migraine, so figure out how to live with it.”
“Headache/migraine is a given with your type A personality.”
Arrogant, rude, dismissive, patronizing, dismissive, judgmental, indifferent — a difficult doctor is troublesome whatever adjective you use. Generally a patient’s recourse is to rant with friends and not see that doc again. But the doctor rarely connects the cause and effect, or even notices when a patient doesn’t return.
Wednesday’s New York Times article in the “Being a Patient” series describes medical groups that are trying to fix the problem by polling patients and reprimanding (or even docking pay of) doctors who receive low ratings from patients. Other courses of correction include having offending docs shadow doctors whose patients give them high marks or attend counseling and training sessions.