Top Ten Ways to Annoy Your Physician

 

1. Bring a long list of complaints.  Many popular articles I’ve seen recently encourage patients to bring a long list of problems to their doctor appointments.  Don’t.  Physicians just do not have time to appropriately address numerous complaints during one office visit.  If you try to do to much, each complaint does not receive the attention and evaluation it deserves.  Instead, make a list of your complaints and health issues at home, and prioritize it.  Try to address the top two at your next office visit, and schedule a follow up visit soon after to address the next two.  On the other hand, a list of questions pertaining to a single problem is o.k., but wait to start firing them off until your doctor has had his or her say, as he’ll likely answer a number of them in the course of the initial evaluation and discussion.
2. Become irate when you’re doctor is running late.  Understand that your physician is doing his best to stay on time.  Many factors contribute to your doctor running behind schedule.  Emergencies, office visits running longer than expected, multiple patients arriving late, and the constant stream of test results and phone calls that flow in are just a few.  If you’re still in the waiting room thirty minutes after your appointment time and don’t feel like waiting any longer, politely ask to reschedule.  Making a scene or becoming angry with the receptionist will achieve nothing, and trust me word of your behavior will make it back to your physician.
3. Arrive late for your appointment.  This is a corollary to number two above.  One of the reasons I sometimes run late is because of patients who arrive late, and still expect to be seen.  Five or ten minutes may not seem like much, but if several patients early after lunch arrive only that much late, the rest of the afternoon I’ll be at least 20-30 minutes behind schedule and the remainder of the day’s patients won’t be happy about it.  Plan to get to the office at least 10-15 minutes ahead of schedule.
4. Be rude to the office staff.  There is no excuse for this.  Employees in physician’s offices work very hard for relatively little compensation.  This type of behavior is one of the few reasons I sometimes discharge patients from my practice.  If you feel you have a right to be upset about the way you were treated by a staff member, ask to speak to the office manager and voice your concern, and feel free to send a followup letter with a copy to your doctor. 
5. Be non-compliant. If your physician prescribes a given test or treatment, there’s usually a very good reason for it.  Ignoring your doctor’s advice and not following through with their recommendations is called noncompliance.  If you don’t understand why you need a given test or treatment, or you have concerns, ask questions and discuss them frankly and honestly with your doctor.  Good physicians will respond much better to you making an informed decision not to follow their advice and being honest about it than they will if you seem to agree then simply don’t follow through.
6. Put more trust in the Internet than your doctor.  Seems a bit ironic to state this on an Internet health blog, but the truth is there’s a lot of misleading and simply erroneous health information floating around on the Internet.  While mainstream sites like WebMD or the CDC.gov can be extremely useful, many other sites are filled with misinformation, usually fueled by an agenda (often trying to sell you something).  Even when it comes to info obtained from the reputable medical sites, there is no substitute for information given to you by your doctor since it will be tailored to you as an individual, rather than just general information for the masses.
7. Call after hours with non-urgent concerns.  Being on call is the worst part of being a physician, since it usually involves staying up all night or on a weekend answering urgent calls and caring for emergency patients at the hospital after you’ve already put in an exhausting day at the office and have another one to look forward to the next day, functioning on very little sleep.  Trivial phone calls from patients add to the burden.  I’ve had patients awaken me with a phone call at 1 AM in order to cancel an appointment.  If your concern is truly an emergency, call 911; if it’s not serious enough for that, then ask yourself if the question is something that can wait until the office reopens.
8. Constantly complain about the expense of your health-care.  Physicians really don’t have much, if any, control over what your health-care costs you.  If you really can’t afford to follow your physician’s advice, then it’s worth bringing up and we may be able to help you figure out a way to proceed.  However, listening to patients complain about their twenty dollar medication co-pay after they’ve just told you about their recent cruise vacation to the Caribbean while twirling their key-chain with the Lexus key on it and playing with their Blackberry, is fairly annoying.
9. Question your doctor because your treatment is different from your neighbor’s.  Many patients seem to think that since they have similar symptoms or conditions to their spouse or neighbor, that they should receive the same testing or treatment.  Deciding on a given test or treatment for a patient is a very complex process that must be individualized based on age, sex, current medications, allergies, other current or chronic medical problems, insurance formularies, and a multitude of other factors.   For this reason, don’t expect to be prescribed the same treatment for your condition as someone else you know.
10. Take numerous over-the-counter drugs or herbal meds without telling your physician.  We need to know everything you’re taking.  Many people take a lot of supplements and OTC meds without mentioning it.  Make a list of all such compounds and bring it with you to your office visit.  Just because something is touted as ‘all-natural’ like many herbal drugs, does not mean it’s harmless or without side effects and/or prescription drug interactions.  There are plenty of potent poisons that are ‘all-natural.’

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