Do Doctors See You as a Problem Patient?

You may make physicians’ hearts sink when they see you on the schedule. Here’s what you should do.

/fatido

Doctors have a name for patients they perceive as overly difficult, emotional, or obnoxious.

These folks are “heartsink” patients for how they make physicians’ hearts sink when they are seen on the appointment schedule.

Heartsink patients may be “frequent flyers” who show up time after time with complex symptoms that are hard to pin down and treat.

Or they may let their feelings get the best of them and cry, complain, and seemingly crave attention?

Or they may be just seen as problematic (aka obnoxious — my word, not theirs).

A doctor coined the term “heartsink patients” about 40 years ago and it became popularized in an academic paper shortly after that, appearing periodically in medical literature since then.

I first came across the term when researching a book on living in chronic pain, which I suffer from. Apparently pain patients, like those with hard-to-diagnose conditions, can easily fall into the heartsink category as they give into frustration and lash out.