Do doctors hate patients, or is it the other way around... and why?

A Woman from Rijeka brought this up earlier and I feel like I should jump in... honestly, I think a massive chunk of our healthcare mess boils down to primary care and those family doctors at the local clinics.
I get the feeling a lot of them just don't have the right expertise, so they end up acting more like glorified switchboard operators just funneling people toward the big hospitals. If we actually had decent triage happening at the GP level, I bet those insane hospital waiting lists would shrink overnight, but that’s just not how things work here. And man, when those folks miss the mark, you get screwed hard, often missing the window for a real diagnosis until it's too late.
It basically goes one of two ways: they either reflexively send you off to a specialist—which helps the patient but absolutely wrecks an already overloaded system—or they spend weeks fumbling around with random treatments while the situation gets worse, eventually landing someone back in the ER or even a funeral home.
It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that once these GPs finish med school and their residency, they pretty much plateau. They don't seem to bother keeping up with the latest research or guidelines, which means they aren't doing proper triage, starting the right treatments, or correctly judging when someone actually needs a specialist and when they don't.
I've seen some scary stuff firsthand because of this—like kids being handed Reglan for simple nausea, little toddlers getting prescribed Tramadol for pain, or treating an acute cholecystitis with just a diet for days right before it perforates. I've even seen people told that colon bleeding was just "stress" without any testing, or someone having leg wounds wrapped for months without anyone ever thinking to check a glucose level that was sitting way over 300. There are endless examples like that.
Look, I know everyone makes mistakes, but these aren't just tiny slip-ups; unfortunately, they aren't rare either. But just like pretty much every other medical blunder in the history of this country, these errors happen without any real consequences or accountability for the person who messed up.
Like I mentioned before, people really don't realize how much luck they need just to survive the adventure of trying to get medical care in this country.
Sadly, that's just the reality we're stuck with.

I spend a lot of time searching through medical records and sitting in hospitals. Honestly, my experiences with the nurses, the front desk staff, and the ward teams haven't been all bad. I've been dealing with health issues since I was 14, and during that time, I ran into maybe five or six terrible nurses—but I never gave them a reason to dislike me. I get it; their job is incredibly demanding, and I’m not going to judge a woman just because she isn't smiling ear-to-ear every single second. I actually have nothing but praise for the nurses on the internal medicine ward at Mount Sinai. They were so patient with everyone, even when I found myself wondering how they managed to stay so calm. My absolute worst experience, though, was with a nurse during a CT scan. She was literally mocking her colleague because she had botched the contrast injection so badly that it hurt me seven different times. There wasn't a single vein left in either of my arms that she didn't blow. On top of that, she was so incredibly rude—acting like it was somehow my fault she couldn't find a vein properly—that I eventually told her I was leaving without the scan. I have to give credit to the young technician there, though; he was a total gentleman. He held down my bruised, mangled vein to try and stop it from bruising further. It didn't work, but I appreciated the effort, and he was actually quite handsome, so I didn't mind him holding my hand—when you're in a miserable situation, you take whatever help you can get 😁 . When I finally limped back to my room, feeling totally poked and prodded, a nurse walked up and said, "I just need to prick you once to draw some blood." My arms were blue from my forearm all the way up to my shoulder. Despite how it looked, she got the blood on the very first try. Not only was she skilled, but she was calm and kind, too. We ended up joking about it at the end; I told her that even though I'm a die-hard Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, my arms were looking more like Los Angeles Lakers colors with all that blue.

1. So, we roll up to the ER at 2 in the morning, right? Two days before this, my grandfather—he's eighty, so you know—tripped over a fence and his side is killing him. And I kid you not, the doctor is actually yelling at him! I could hear it from outside the exam room! He’s basically telling the old man he should’ve just asked his granddaughter to hang out with him instead of waking her up at 2 AM just to drag her to the hospital because he wanted some attention. Like, seriously? Such a jerk.

2. Then there's the whole neurology thing. Even though the specialist explicitly wrote that a head CT was urgent, they try to schedule me three months out. But the second I start asking about paying out-of-pocket to get it done immediately? Suddenly, I'm on the schedule for tomorrow, and the results are read instantly. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

3. Fast forward three years after that second incident... after dealing with headaches for three weeks straight, I finally see my primary care doctor. She goes, "Oh yeah, you had some pretty bad test results a few years back. Let's go ahead and run another EEG to see if it's epilepsy or what." Like, excuse me? A few years?!

4. And don't even get me started on the local clinic. If you want an X-ray, you have to make an appointment, but you can *only* do it in person between 8 and 9 in the morning. I mean, come on, does anyone in this country actually have a job? Then, they slot you in at 8:30 along with thirty other people, and you just sit there like an idiot until noon. To top it off, you can only pick up the results between 12 and 1 PM. Seriously, does nobody work during those hours? One single checkup costs me three full days away from work...

5. Last year, my honey was sitting there with a 102 fever and mono, waiting at his doctor's office from 1 PM until 6 PM just to be seen.

6. Also, my dentist didn't notice any gum disease for six whole months... then suddenly, I end up in the ER with a massive infection (abscess and all that mess). The doctor at the emergency clinic tells me, "Yeah, you definitely have periodontitis," and then tells me to come back Monday with a referral since it's Friday. NO TREATMENT. Then, Saturday rolls around, and I'm back in the ER again getting slapped with a gram of antibiotics.

7. My wife had to undergo her second surgery in the exact same year... and after a month of recovery, the insurance board just coldly sends her back to the very job that caused the issues requiring the surgeries in the first place. Unbelievable.

PS: Now I'm waiting on an EEG, and they say it might take a month. It used to be much faster back in the day under the previous administration... back then, you'd wait maybe two days. Are these doctors trying to tell us that patient numbers have (suddenly) skyrocketed? I doubt it.

Oh, and get this... apparently, you can't even book an appointment with a gynecologist in November. They claim they're fully booked through the New Year, and they won't even open up New Year appointments until January hits. Man, I would love to just be a fly on the wall for one day, just to see how much these doctors actually work...

Anyway, cheers to some of them... but yeah.

A Woman from Rijeka said:Lately, we keep circling back to this one topic that seems to pop up more often than not: the actual value of our hard work.
It feels like everyone expects a specialist to be an endless fountain of positivity—someone who’s always ready to listen, perform their medical duties perfectly, explain everything clearly, and answer every single random question. On top of that, you're expected to be some kind of stoic saint when a patient is being rude, aggressive, or venting frustration about something totally unrelated to you. You have to grind through roughly 70 exams or procedures a day, feeling genuine joy when a patient recovers and true heartbreak when things go south (and trust me, those emotions are very real, even if nobody believes us)... all while working for $12 standard specialist hourly rates.
What’s your take on all this?

Personally, I believe that if a doctor has a list of priorities, the relationship with the patient should sit right at the top, with everything else following after. ☕

A year ago, I didn't have any reason to see a doctor, but now? It feels like I'm constantly at the clinic, which is just exhausting. Honestly, I feel like we barely need general practitioners anymore; maybe a pharmacist at a CVS could handle half this stuff. Here’s my deal: I actually switched doctors about a year ago because I just couldn't take the lack of professionalism. His official hours were supposed to be 7 AM to 2 PM, but he’d roll in around 9, the nurse would show up at 8 to grab all the patient files by 9:30, and by noon, he was basically gone. Where are the oversight inspections? Someone should definitely do some unannounced visits to these local clinics to see what's really going on. One evening, I was at the pediatrician's with my kid—it must have been around 7 PM—and since his office and the pediatrician's are connected by the same hallway, I saw the nurse walking out. I told her I needed to swing by the doctor's office right after our appointment, and she just looked at me and said the doctor had already headed home and she was leaving too! And get this—his posted hours say he's there until 9 PM! That was the breaking point for me, so I went to someone else. But oh boy, this new one is a whole different kind of nightmare. I’ve seen countless specialists already, yet he just keeps bouncing me around. There’s even a notice on the door from the Department of Health about limiting referrals, but the guy can't even begin to grasp what's wrong with me if he won't send me to a specialist. It's ridiculous. These GPs act like they're gods, especially in smaller towns, when all they really do is scribble a referral or refill a prescription for a common cold.

Basta said:In my view, if we're talking about a doctor's priorities, the relationship with the patient ought to be at the very top—everything else should just follow that. ☕

Sure, if you don't particularly 😬

Personally, though—and I suppose this might sound a bit blunt—my absolute priority is the actual expertise of whoever is treating me. Of course, if I had to choose between someone who is both highly skilled and kind versus someone who is highly skilled but somewhat abrasive, I’d obviously go with the former. But, let's be honest, if I actually have a medical issue, I’d much rather have someone who can actually fix it than spend thirty minutes having pleasant, small talk in an exam room. 😉

Elizabeth Foster20 said:Exactly. If you aren't looking for 😬 something trivial,

for me, the absolute priority is always going to be the actual expertise of the person treating me. Of course, if I had to choose between someone who is both skilled and polite versus someone who is skilled but abrasive, I’d obviously take the nice one every single time. But at the end of the day, if I have a genuine medical issue, I just want someone to actually fix it, rather than sitting in an exam room wasting thirty minutes engaging in pleasant small talk. 😉

Yes, competence really ought to be the primary concern. I spent years paying a premium for "pleasant atmospheres" and friendly bedside manners with private doctors, and frankly—to put it bluntly—it was a mistake.

Hand on my heart, the arrogance you see among medical professionals here in the States is just... it's everywhere. From the doctors right down to the nurses. I honestly can't wrap my head around how someone could be so rude to a patient, or just start yelling at them for no reason. I don't think I've ever been that way myself—and God, I really hope I never am. Even though, let’s be real, there are definitely those types of patients who can drive you absolutely up the wall. But still, a little kindness goes a long way; it beats snapping at people when things get stressful. 🙂

Generally speaking, the whole culture of how people treat each other in the US is kind of lacking. It's something that desperately needs work. But look, I get it—the pay is often terrible, they're overworked and seeing way too many patients, and then you've got some patients who are just plain entitled themselves. It's a vicious cycle. 🙄