Are nurses and doctors generally polite and understanding or rude and cruel?

What’s been your personal experience?

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If you’re in the system long enough, you’ll probably encounter a few less than professional nurses and doctors.

I never had an issue with a nurse, but saw a jerk of a psychiatrist once. I ditched him in a heartbeat.

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Rude demeaning and condescending, but I’ve had one dr. help a lot recently, I have a new pdoc so we’ll see how this one goes lol. I think if I was thin, rich and had expensive insurance they would treat me better.

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no doubt. I’m in Canada, so it’s all covered, but I feel like they treat us like second class citizens. Mental health has such a long way to go. Personally I found when I’m not doing well, they can get very cruel. But when I’m on my way to recovery they get excited and are happy to interact with me. It’s strange, because really when I’m sick, what I need most is compassion. Instead they mess with me, feeding into my delusions.

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Yes it seems common in this forum that all over the world sz’ers get treated poorly from medical staff.

Generally they are polite, but there are many exceptions.

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If you are not on comfortable grounds with your psychiatrist, request somebody different.

I had a jerk PDoc and told the Administration that if they didn’t get me someone else, I would stop showing up for my appointments and stop taking my medication.

They switched me right away.

Many patients tolerate or put up with bad doctors because they feel like there is nothing they can do about it.

Not true at all. Raise hell until you get a doctor you are satisfied with.

I havent had a chance to form an opinion of my shrink lately - every 4 months when i get a med review off the phone its always a different one!

I just tell them im fine with my current meds - and dont change em! - its normally over in 5 mins lol.

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Where I live there is a limited amount of pdocs, most of the places I’ve been only have one pdoc for the whole establishment, The state run hospital doesn’t accept my insurance, I kinda just have to hope the next pdoc is better than the last, I make my appointments for 6 months at a time to stay away form them as long as I can, the place I’m at now the pdocs change every time I show up for an appointment with no notice.

I’ve had a bad psych nurse who increased my dose of an antidepressant that was actually making me worse. I wasn’t badly depressed until she started me on it in the first place. She also thought joining a clubhouse would magically cure my problems (I get that socializing with people with similar struggles can be beneficial but I was in need of so much more than that). Thankfully my current psych nurse is a lot more professional and respectful.

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My current pdoc isn’t bad perfect,but he’s the best one I’ve had by a long way… At my last place things were so bad that asking for more help had me branded as ‘awkward,demanding and troublesome’. That lead to me giving blase responses when asked how I was, not too bad/so so were stock responses.

In my experience it truly is one extreme or the other. They’re either very warm and caring or they are succinct and disconnected from all human empathy.

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their just jaded, at least thats what ive learned from my classmates

Most I’ve run into are polite and understanding…although I had a couple during involuntary commitment who were less so.

They’ve been great generally. I remember just once out of all the times I did feel like the doctor was rushing to get me out before my 1 hour session was over. And I also remember my first cbt therapist once or twice trying to hide a laugh due to what I said and cos I was in a very bad place I didn’t know how to take that positively.

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I was talking about this w my therapist. He was saying if they don’t have the “tools” to deal with psych patients they just default to what they can do which is be rude basically. What it is is a lack of understanding that psych patients are people too and deserve respect and kindness. A lot of staff at my facility I notice seem to infantilize the patients, ie treat them as if they were misbehaving children rather than adults struggling with an illness. Even the staff that works with actual children doesn’t seem to realize you can’t handle a traumatized child the same way you would a regular one.

I work at a psych hospital as a nurse and am just amazed by how rude staff are sometimes. I want to snap at them “YOU are in full control of your mental faculties, they are not. Their behavior at this time doesn’t necessarily reflect who they are as a person but it does for you.”

It’s literally all about treating people how you want to be treated and so many dont get that.

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My pcdoc was a real big horse’s ass couple of months ago. He really pissed me off. So to answer your question they can be very rude, and sometimes nice.

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Most of the doctors and nurses I have met were totally professional. One nurse really made me mad one time when she put me on Haldol. I didn’t like her. It’s probably a bad idea to stereotype like that. You can’t lump large numbers of people into one group.

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There are some doctors and nurses who are ass holes, but I think that for the most part many of them care about their patients.
Although many in the medical field tend to stigmatize towards the mentally ill.