The Nightmare Patient

Me: Ingat lagi tarikh haid terakhir?
Patient: Tak ingat... pada bulan 1 lah...
Me: Bila tarikh bersalin?
Patient: Tak tahu lah...tak ingat...
After insistent prompting,
Patient: 8? 8 Oktober... macam 8 haribulan  (And when I checked the case note later on, it wasn't 8th!)
Me: Okay, bila scan pertama?
Patient: hmm... 7 bulan?
Me: Sounding incredulous and trying to keep my calm ... 7 bulan? Puan berdaftar di Klinik Desa pada 8 minggu kandungan kan? Tiada scan pada masa awal kandungan?
Patient: Tiada.
Me: Ok, apa keputusan scan? Apa doktor bilang? Baby ok ke?
Patient: (Blur look) Tak tahu lah...Doktor tidak beritahu apa2.

And the 'Tak tahu' went on.... This is a 23-year-old lady with SPM qualification I'm talking about. Not the 16-year-old girl or 40-year-old mak cik from kampung who has never been school.

Jeez!!!! There's nothing worse like getting a patient who doesn't know a damn thing about her disease or her baby's condition or her child's illness. Like, how can you not know? It's your body, your disease, your baby in your uterus. Don't you care? Or do you trust the medical personnel here so much that you feel 100% sure that everything they do is the best, the most appropriate treatment for you that you don't feel the need to question or know anything?

I couldn't help but overhear these 2 housemen bitching about their patients the other day. They were gossiping about how rude the patients talked to them and how rude THEY acted back towards the said patients. I was listening with a poker face but inwardly, I was like "OMG...what kind of doctors are they to be talking like that to the patients. It must be their fault that the patients were rude to them in the first place. How can they be so rude to patients?" and bla...bla...bla... all my disapprovals... Little did I know that I would be bitching about my patient now.

Most of my patients were really nice and cooperative. Most of the time, it's really easy to get a decent amount of information from them. But there are times when I face this group of challenging patients, which really try my patience. And at times like this, I always, I mean ALWAYS IMMEDIATELY, make a silent prayer to God that I not get this kind of patients in the exams because then, I would certainly burst into tears in the middle of the exams or do desperate things like kneeling down and pleading to the patients to tell me something, anything. With exams less than a week away, this patient I clerked today is giving me a nightmare.