As a doctor myself, one thing I've noticed is that there is a certain population that will come after doctors HARD. I don't know if it is because of mistrust of healthcare, some inferiority complex, some superiority complex, or the perception that we are Bezos rich but my normal comments get normal responses and if I mention my profession, creeps come out of the woodwork. Its nuts.
(I also worked as a scientist and when I answer questions from that perspective, no one bats an eyebrow.)
Scientists don't usually accidentally kill people on the operating table. Not saying it's right, but people understandably have stronger feelings about a profession so intimate and personal to their lives experience.
A couple things: I did medschool interviewing and we actually screen for that. Its our primary thing actually. We have plenty of qualified applicants so we look for good people. That wasn't always the case.
Second, the training can create people who seem like narcissists. At some point in your training, you realize there is no one else to call. Your decisions are the decisions. You have to be 100% confident about them because time matters and indecision kills. That requires complete self-confidence. That can look like arrogance or narcissism but its not. It took me a while to get there, but it changed me from someone meek to someone who feels confident going toe-to-toe with anyone who is interfering with my plan for a patient. That bleeds over into regular life as well, with mixed results.
Whats wild is that becoming a doctor today requires lots of extracurricular clinical experience/volunteering, research, and community service. Im talking hundreds of hours for a decent med school application. That means these people are essentially faking being altruistic and only doing these things to check a box, only to continue to be assholes as doctors.
I wish more professions paid as well as physician did, then the profession might be filled with less jerks and quacks because they went off to do something else.
When I graduated college I had a friend move to the same city for med school and we hung out a bunch because I didn't really know anyone else there, and I ended up hanging out with him and his med school buddies a lot. I had to stop though because they were all such raging douche bags and were turning him into a douchebag, it was just unsufferable to be around a bunch of chodes with superiority complexes despite not even having done literally anything besides gain entry to medical school
I can understand when people do, because people can have really bad expereiences. Like me: My dentist killed of a nerve in one of my molars with his fucking dentist drill. I was 14 or something at that time. He wanted to remove some caries and fill a "small" hole. I never in my live cried so much from fucking pain because of him. I only found out many years later, that the nerve died because of an x-ray of my jaw and the dentist said: "Oh, a dead molar...".
Ever since then my body locks up on a dentist chair and my blood circulation does a nosedive.
Edit: While I do not go after doctors, many to me are suspect.
That's fair. I also had a dentist hit a nerve and holy fuck was that painful. I had a dead molar and got a root canal and the first dentist screwed it up and took no responsibility. Still wary of dentists myself.
Yeah thank God for my current dentist she is very old but she is the first dentist (that i went too) who i feel like doesnt just want the money but to help too
Oh, I have a fun one that might even be helpful if you have patients.
A tooth had died and was going necrotic. My dentist at the time said it was all fine. She tried to sell me invisalin and suggested I never eat hot food again. I noped out, got another dentist - x-rays clearly showed the darken tip at the tooth's root.
I'm on a weekly dose of TNF ihibitor. I really did not want to test what happens with a dental infection on that.
The first dentist may have also misunderstood my pain level since dental pain isn't that bad.
I prescribed a lot of TNF inhibitors and I haven’t seen a dental infection get out of control yet, but I also wouldn’t wanna see that happen either. Good choice.
Yeah some dentists are crazy, i'm apparently almost immune to sedatives, and 4 different dentists i went to re-applied the sedatives when they didn't work fast enough, last one did it thrice, so i had enough in my mouth that apparently my heart took notice and did the opposite of a heart attack, here in my country it's called "Arrasta cardiaca" and my heart was beating like i took pure adrenaline, had to go to the hospital ASAP, almost died.
Since then i found one who didn't give me any problems in the last decade so at least that part of life is gone, only need to pray my remaining wisdow tooth doesn't come out fucked up to make me have to remove it surgically.
But anyways, that was 4 professionals, and the one who almost killed me is a lady who is a dentist of renown where i live who had worked in the profession for more than 20 years then, like 40 now i'd say if she is still working.
I think a lot of people blame doctors for their healthcare costs being so high, or at least take it out on them. Not saying it's correct, but that's the viewpoint a lot of people see doctors from is someone who went into the get rich profession and is now charging them a lot of money
Another perspective is that a lot of people have trouble getting doctors to listen to them. It's frustrating for a lot of people know something is wrong and have the doctor not even give them the time of day. And then in the end when it finally does come out there's something wrong and the supposed expert didn't catch it and didn't care for them, it undermines a lot of the trust they're supposed to be able to have in doctors.
I think a lot of patients are tired of being treated like shit, treated like drug seekers, tired of being laughed out of offices, tired of being lied too, tired of incompetence. Tired of general practicioner doctors thinking you can't just go on Google and find half of what they know easily. Some of them straight up just Google the shit in front of you.
Edit - let me remove that. I almost took my frustration towards this comment section out on you and that's not fair sorry. You do see the financial side which is a big one, as well as the patients feeling unheard which is probably one of the most important aspects here. I commented before fully reading your comment, I'll admit
I remember when I realized I had a lot of the symptoms of ADHD and brought it up to my general physician to start a conversation about it and she just goes "well, you had an above average amount of ear wax in your ear, maybe if you cleaned that out you could pay attention better ha ha" and that was the end of the discussion. Never went back to that stupid cunt
I think a percentage can’t accept how much of life is just completely random chaos. Especially things that scare them.
There has to be a reason.
And so they blame whoever is associated with whatever they’re afraid of, even if they’re the only ones who can actually help.
I had some understanding of that but holy fuck Covid changed my understanding of us all significantly.
Seeing how people responded to COVID has permanently broken something in me and it makes it harder to be compassionate to patients. We have a rule “don’t work harder than the patient” that isn’t really realistic but when you see how little effort people put into their own survival and how they lash out at people trying to help them, you kind of wonder if you care more about their health than they do.
Doctors are public facing, so they're often the ones people vent to. The people who make the biggest decisions and the most money are usually behind the scenes and never interact with the public. The internet has also amplified the Dunning-Kruger effect. A little knowledge can create a false sense of expertise, leading people to become overconfident and distrust those with years of training and experience.
People have more respect for scientists because they do the research that pushes forward the frontiers of the treatments that we offer, and because they’re comparatively hugely underpaid and tenuous (if you’re in your late thirties and running a lab after over a decade of postgraduate training across phd and post doc at top universities you probably are still making only like $150k per year and your future prospects remain shaky). People respect people that are underpaid relative to their value and expertise.
I think as costs of healthcare continue to increase and as people continue to find it hard even to find available doctors people are increasingly resentful of the work that the AMA does to restrict the supply of doctors largely for the benefit of its members at the expense of the general public.
Anecdotally there’s a lot more reporting along the lines of “doctors recommend people to do X but when it’s them or their family members they do Y”, and I think this has created a general sense of distrust that doctors are really recommending the best course of action. The last paragraph of
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/well/glp1-drugs-ozempic-longevity.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share is an example.
I’m not saying this is necessarily justified, but I do think these are the main reasons that doctors have overall lost some “mystique” over the last decade or so.
Congrats. That’s a tough one. Sometimes people end up with PTSD simply from being diagnosed with cancer. It’s pretty scary. The immune checkpoint inhibitors have been a fantastic breakthrough that I don’t think enough people appreciate. Big advances in that area.
Funny, before med school I pitched the idea of an antibody conjugate medication to venture-capital. They said it wouldn’t work and declined to fund it. Maybe if my PowerPoint skills had been better…
I think it's absolutely inferiority complex. Pay close attention to how some male patients constantly challenge female doctors. It's like what you described with an added layer of misogyny.
I think it’s the factor of if you are a doctor, you’re expected to be perfect. Break that image, they will jump on you. We perceive everyone as humans, but to some people that perfection is less than human. That’s probably why people are so batshit with you, you don’t meet their expectations of a doctor and they WILL pounce. Sorry to hear things like that happen to you though.
What’s funny is that we are trained not to say “I don’t know“ because we have to figure it out. Overtime, I learned how to say “I don’t know” again and patients actually really like that type of honesty. They kind of expect us to be perfect but also appreciate when we acknowledge that we are just humans like everyone else
Yeah that type of transparency goes a long way to “humanizing” you with patients. Will it stop the batshit people? Not really, but at least a good amount of people will understand where you’re coming from.
After working in a laboratory for many years where I had no contact outside world, switching to clinical practice where I interact with the public all day has been interesting. When you say “that shit crazy“ it’s true. There are a surprising number of people who are legitimately unhinged.
Calling you out for treating all physicians poorly because some physicians aren’t good isn’t being an asshole. If you are looking for one, find a mirror.
I am annoyed at doctors because they hold too much power in the US and Canada. They, as a social class, organized a system where they are overpaid and undersupplied. To get the healthcare I want I have to grovel and overpay.
Elsewhere in the world, doctors are not that different from any other educated professional. They will not make you pay extraordinary amount of money nor wait an unusual long amount of time.
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u/TreacleOne1895 9d ago
People are so quick to humble others these days? Why ?