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following on from my last post
There's a question I'd like to pose to you all, and that question is this:
What do you want from your doctor?
I know a lot of people who have had bad experiences because they're queer, or overweight, or trans, or have a disability. I know a lot of people who have had bad experiences because they weren't listened to or weren't taken seriously, or because the doctor walked into the consultation with certain assumptions or communicated poorly with them.
I'm not really talking about the healthcare system as a whole, more about doctors as people and the one-on-one relationship they have with patients, both in primary care settings and in hospitals. I don't want to turn into the doctor people blog about because their experience was degrading or insulting or unhelpful or embarrassing. And as the daughter of a surgeon and a GP, someone who's never gone to a doctor herself except for basic things like stress somatisation and vaccinations (and even then, armed with a fairly thorough medical knowledge), and as a healthy white cissexual upper-middle-class person who's still struggling to recognise and own her privilege, I know I haven't had the same experiences that a lot of other people have.
I want to know what to look for when observing others in my profession for the remainder of my degreee. I want to know: what should I become? What shouldn't I become?
(Mental health is definitely included in this; it's a particular area of interest and concern of mine, and I think it's poorly understood and poorly approached by a lot of medical professionals.)
Feel free to link this post, if you like. The more opinions & anecdotes (good or bad) I get, the better.
What do you want from your doctor?
I know a lot of people who have had bad experiences because they're queer, or overweight, or trans, or have a disability. I know a lot of people who have had bad experiences because they weren't listened to or weren't taken seriously, or because the doctor walked into the consultation with certain assumptions or communicated poorly with them.
I'm not really talking about the healthcare system as a whole, more about doctors as people and the one-on-one relationship they have with patients, both in primary care settings and in hospitals. I don't want to turn into the doctor people blog about because their experience was degrading or insulting or unhelpful or embarrassing. And as the daughter of a surgeon and a GP, someone who's never gone to a doctor herself except for basic things like stress somatisation and vaccinations (and even then, armed with a fairly thorough medical knowledge), and as a healthy white cissexual upper-middle-class person who's still struggling to recognise and own her privilege, I know I haven't had the same experiences that a lot of other people have.
I want to know what to look for when observing others in my profession for the remainder of my degreee. I want to know: what should I become? What shouldn't I become?
(Mental health is definitely included in this; it's a particular area of interest and concern of mine, and I think it's poorly understood and poorly approached by a lot of medical professionals.)
Feel free to link this post, if you like. The more opinions & anecdotes (good or bad) I get, the better.
no subject
Some things I appreciate in a health professional:
- I talk in circles, especially when distressed, so I appreciate a doctor who can ask the right questions to get a straight story out of me
- A hefty dose of Listening Skills to go with that is crucial, though! I'm really, really bad at communicating with doctors and/or shrinks. I feel like I'm giving them information and it's going into the wrong boxes or getting misprioritised or something, because the conclusions the doctor comes to are usually VAGUELY related to what I told them but don't match up at all with what I tried to say was most important.
Uhmmm... some other things...
- not assuming that every girl on the pill is sexually active is a good start! Also I have the impression that some doctors used to think I was lying about my virginity in order to avoid pap smears.
- I had a doctor who was very brisk and efficient and who did believe me about the virgin bit. I liked her, she never badgered me about pap smears and gave orders that no one was to do an internal ultrasound on me. I was quite relieved about that but also a bit annoyed because she just flat-out declared that "we won't let them do that if you've not been sexually active". I'm a grown-up! I would actually not have minded if it were necessary, and I'd have preferred it if she didn't seem quite so much like she was making a Special Virgins Rule for me.
- Oh, and speaking of: Don't make pelvic exams weird by going on and on about how it shouldn't be weird. I saw this urologist when I was about thirteen, and he had to have a look at my external ladybits. Being thirteen, I took my mum in there with me, and he subjected us both to this big long horribly embarrassing ramble about how I needn't feel uncomfortable, my mother had lots of exams like this when she was pregnant with me. As it happens, I wasn't uncomfortable until he gave me this signal that I ought to be.
Aaaaand I would like GPs not to play home psychiatrist! Telling me long rambles about how I remind you of you when you were at uni and were an over-achieving whatever (not you you, general you) does not help. Ditto all doctors and mental health professionals who seem to think that they have the responsibility to police my career choices. I swear my doctor in Canberra was measuring the success of my psychology treatment by whether or not I had given up the idea of going back to uni.
I also concur with the things K said.