The Friday Funny: A New Place For Pharma Ads
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Top 10 Ways Doctors Annoy Patients
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Someone suggested I was being mean or making fun of patients in my previous post. Those of you who read this blog regularly (aside from needing serious psychiatric evaluation) are aware that I am quite sympathetic of my patients’ position in this relationship. Mine is a position of power, while they are coming to me with an admission of weakness. There is no doubt that I would rather sit in the doctor’s chair than that of the patient – and that’s not just because my chair has wheels on it.
My intent in writing this blog is to show the doctor/patient interaction through the eyes of a physician – a perspective most people don’t get very often. Even though I have lots to be thankful for in my profession, I still have things that regularly annoy me. For me to voice that annoyance in a light manner is meant to both educate people of my perspective, and entertain those who share it.
Enough of that. Now it’s time to move on to the strategies we physicians use to get back at patients for their shenanigans. You may not realize it, but we have a special class in medical school dedicated solely to the ways to annoy and embarrass our patients. It’s an art, really. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
Maybe The ER Shouldn’t Be A Fun Place For Kids
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What’s the deal with hospital stickers these days? I found this sticker laying around in Happy’s emergency department the other day. Should we be encouraging children to come to the emergency room and feeling happy and excited about the sticker they get? I’m not sure putting a happy robot on a sticker and proclaiming ones exciting visit to the emergency is the best public health policy. Perhaps we need to take a different course of action before another entire generation of citizens feel obliged to use the emergency department as their sole source of medical care. Perhaps instead of a hospital sticker, children in the emergency room would all get a saline injection in their shoulder. Now that’s the kind of memory you want kids to have of their emergency room visit. They should fear the hospital and do everything in their power to stay healthy as adults. Not feel giddy about happy robots on hospital stickers.
Do children get hospital stickers at your facility?
*This blog post was originally published at A Happy Hospitalist*
An Open Letter To My Pancreas
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Dear Pancreas,
I’m not sure what the hell happened to you, but you’ve taken it upon yourself to stop working. You did have that job for about six years, where you got up early every day and produced my insulin, but apparently that was too much for you. You were laid off or fired or something. Don’t blame it on that virus again. I think you just slept through the alarm and were let go and you just don’t want to admit it.
All you do is sit around, hiding out behind my stomach, reading smut novels and watching reruns of The Facts of Life. Sure, you push out the occasional juices and you can sound important when you talk about “trypsinogen” and “chymotrypsinogen,” but you and I both know that you don’t do much. It’s not even like you empty the dishwasher or anything. The least you could do, after I’ve been testing blood sugar levels and bolusing all day long, is have dinner on the table when I come home. Is that too much to ask? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
Ten Ways to Annoy Your Doctor
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Top 10 lists are back!
I forgot about this kind of post, and a reminder by a reader is bringing them back. They are really a fun and easy kind of post to write, so you may see a fair number of them (read: Rob is getting lazy). I thought I’d start back with some suggestions for disgruntled patients (or gruntled ones, for that matter) to make their doctor’s day much worse.
1. Require the doctor to keep things secret from your child or your elderly parent. Insist that they can’t know about their cancer, depression, ADD, or foot fungus. Call the medication the doctor prescribes “vitamins.” Alternatively, you can threaten your child by saying that if they don’t behave better, the doctor will give them a shot. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
