The Middle Class & Medicine

[FfIghter23]

http://www.vice.com/read/could-being-middle-class-kill-you-999?utm_source=vicetwitterus

 

This article had me laughing as it describes working in suburban, middle-class America and how they make my life miserable. Haha

 

 

"The problem with these people is that they're just clever enough to be stupid. They know enough to be confident searching for alternative sources of information on Google, but all that new information confuses their poor, harried brains and they end up making bad choices anyway. These are the people responsible for much of the current mess in the United States right now. Working-class people may skip the odd vaccine, but it takes middle-class Californians to be so colossally moronic as to throw measles parties."

[winterallsummer]

There is nothing worse to me than the self entitled and usually middle or upper (but occasionally working) class patient families who feel that I am obliged to give their hospitalized family member more of my time than any other patient. So because you googled what heart failure is and you have a bad attitude you think I should devote my entire work day to ordering tests you want (gee better not leave it to us the professionals), calling unnecessary consultants who wouldn't be willing to see this routine case if I begged them, and explaining why grandpa has a BS of 161 and "what I'm doing right now to fix that!" Ironically the patients themselves in these situations are often totally reasonable but the family members are sometimes beyond entitled and obnoxious. I would love nothing more than to sit them in a wheelchair and take them to see my patients in ICU that they are taking time away from with their quasi but ultimately uneducated nuances about "patient care." That is what someone who deserves

More of my time looks like - hooked up to more lines than a 1980s era computer. If you really cared so much about grandpa maybe you should've taken away his candy and cigarettes five months ago or visited him more often during his gradual deterioration which is largely due to the natural process of aging (and which I am mostly powerless to intervene with.)

 

Give me the unfunded and homeless uncontrolled septic crashing diabetic whose family or self appreciate their care any day over these types. Anyway perhaps I am getting a little carried away here. But yes I agree caring for the middle and upper classes is a pain. Too much customer service involved. Lucky for me so many of my patients have crappy or no insurance - until it's time to discharge them, that is...

[SERENITY NOW]

Meh... I don't know. I hoped for the idealized image of the 'poor but very grateful' patient when I signed up for this ER residency spot in an underserved inner-city public hospital.   I was sorely disappointed.  I've found there to be just as much demanding, rude, and ungrateful behavior as the middle-upper class hospitals I worked at during school.  Respect is a thing of the past.  

[rev ronin]

Meh... I don't know. I hoped for the idealized image of the 'poor but very grateful' patient when I signed up for this ER residency spot in an underserved inner-city public hospital.   I was sorely disappointed.  I've found there to be just as much demanding, rude, and ungrateful behavior as the middle-upper class hospitals I worked at during school.  Respect is a thing of the past.  

Go work outside the US; my experience is that the poor in the rest of the world are genuinely grateful.

[winterallsummer]

Yes I found that when in the ER too. I once moonlit a week in an UC in suburbia (never again) however and realized just how ridiculous some people can be.