The angry IVF patient

Every IVF clinic has their share of unhappy patients.Patients get upset for many reasons. Their cycle may have failed ; or the treatment is costing much more than they thought they would; or they feel that the doctor's not paying enough attention to them; or that they have to wait too long; or that the staff is unfriendly.This is quite natural. After all, no one enjoys spending money in a doctor's clinic. The outcome of any IVF treatment is uncertain, and when you are sick, your head and your heart often don't work properly. Every little incident can upset you, and you often need to vent. While you may want to scream at the doctor, you are too scared to do this ; and in any case, the doctor is not easily accessible.This is why angry patients will often use the IVF clinic staff as their punching bag . The staff is often at the receiving end of the patient's ire, no matter what the underlying reason for his anger may be.This can be hard for the poor clinic staff, because they have to put up with a lot of emotional abuse for no fault of theirs. Even worse, often the doctor will also take the patient's side , because he doesn't want to upset his paying patients. It can be extremely hard to listen to a lot of rubbish from an angry patient when you are not at fault.We doctors need to learn to empathize with our clinic staff because they have an extremely difficult role to play. We need to support them and teach them that when a patient starts shouting at them, they need to keep the...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs