Mrs. M.’s name was on my list. It made me a little nervous. She’d seen both of my new partners  - with one, the whole thing had finished up in fraught scene with her demanding prescription for methadone and being refused, and the whole thing taking up ¾ of an hour and spilling out of the exam room and into the hall way - which of course when you have a 15 minute appointment causes stress in itself (time pressure is the constant and most stressful part of the job if you ask me). Read the rest of this post here »

 Some patients drive you crazy. Usually the ones that are anxious and hypochondriacal   and dare I say it dumb. I’ve often thought stupidity and anxiety are a bad combination.

But my point is, we doctors are not automatons. Unemotional machines/computers that acquire information and objectively analyse it according to Bayesian probability. No we’re this seething mass of emotion ourselves. And our analysis of, and reaction to, some pathetic patient in the throwes of crisis is subject to our own subjectivity - and whether we’ve just gotten laid or had a row with the wife instead, or our monthly numbers are crap, or our partner won’t take call and allow you to go to the Redskins game some rep has invited you to or. . . . well, you know there’s no shortage of examples of things that wind you up.

 Don’t be first at the code. Read the rest of this post here »