What your doctor REALLY thinks of you: From Dr Google to telling lies, GPs reveal the dos and don’ts of what to say so you’re taken seriously
If you come to your doctor’s practice with a shopping list of ailments, let him know that you already have Dr. Google consulted, or are you downplaying your problem when pressed? Chances are your doctor wants to secretly write a prescription for a new patient. KERRY PARNELL spoke to clinicians across the UK to find out what they would like you to do and what they really wish you wouldn’t do…
Don’t say you consulted Dr. Google
While it’s good that you’ve done some research, most doctors aren’t fans of Dr. Google. “I usually say, ‘Dr. Google or Dr. YouTube didn’t go to college,” says one hospital specialist, adding that when the patient then becomes irritated, they respond, “Just because I’ve been a passenger on a plane, That doesn’t mean I know how I have to fly it and I can tell the pilot what to do.’
Another doctor, a general practitioner, says their standard response is, “How fascinating,” before writing “a note in my book that will never be looked at again.”
Present your most serious condition first
If you go to your doctor with a shopping list of problems, at least put the most serious ones at the top. A rural GP says: ‘The most annoying thing for me is when someone presents a list of seventeen problems, with fairly trivial problems to begin with. And at the end, just as I’m trying to wrap things up, it turns out they’re having chest pains.”
A GP from the city center says that when they come across ‘the list’, they ask the patient to hand it over and say: ‘We will figure out the most important thing together.’
Doctors don’t want you to stay away from their surgery for too long, or to underestimate your problem if you do show up
KERRY PARNELL spoke to doctors across the UK to find out what they’d like you to do and what they wouldn’t actually want you to do
Just tell me it’s serious
While some patients visit their GP at the first sign of sniffling – ‘If you come in and tell me that it hurts when you twist your wrist and bend your fingers back, I will pause for a moment and then advise you not to make that unnatural movement try,” says a GP. Conversely, no doctor wants you to stay away from surgery for too long, or downplay your problem if you do show up.
“Some of my nicest patients are farmers,” the rural GP explains. “One of our old jokes is that a farmer has been reported to reception with ‘a scratch’, usually an emergency involving a bleeding amputation, because farmers are so tough.”
“I absolutely love my older, stoic patients,” says another GP. “There was a dear man in his 90s who I asked if he had moved back to the area because we hadn’t had any notes since 1976. He told me that he had not had to ‘bother’ us since, but had made this arrangement to tell me that he was lonely, as his wife had died. He wanted it stated that when he died, he would like to have ‘old age’ written on his death certificate, ‘like the Queen’. A few months later I was able to fulfill his wish.’
Tell the truth
There’s no point in lying if you want help. From the alcoholic who vehemently denied he had a problem, but arrived for a GP consultation with a bottle of whiskey in hand and when questioned about his drinking, ‘made deep eye contact before ostentatiously pouring it down my sink’, to the hospital patient who, ‘just off the ventilator, went straight outside for a cigarette’, there is nothing that makes a doctor’s heart sink faster.
Don’t use euphemisms
Medics have seen and heard it all, so speak clearly. “I have gentlemen tell me that they have problems with ‘their portlights’,” says a GP in London. ‘Many patients tell me they spend too much money. Fortunately I can translate.’
The best way to discuss your problem is ‘in simple layman’s terms’, says the hospital specialist. ‘Better still, if the patient clearly states what he/she considers a good outcome, or can indicate what he/she would like to see changed as a result of the treatment.’
Have no questionable hygiene problems
Do you want to know which kind of patient really stinks according to doctors? “I don’t like people who are not very clean and leave bits of skin on my floor,” says a doctor in the city. Don’t worry about the personal care aspect though – all the doctors I spoke to agreed that they don’t care about anything down there…as long as it’s clean. One GP admitted to tackling the hygiene problem by advising irritable patients to ‘take one tablet after bathing’. So now you know!