"Good manners and empathy are worth nothing"

I had a pretty disastrous meeting with a GP at Keyworth medical practice. I won’t be going back to the health centre for a very long time if I can help it.

The best bit was ok, they did acknowledge my symptoms are having a detrimental impact on the quality of life, and spent a fair amount of time on this.

The worst bits, firstly I found them patronising. Their stock in trade phrase was ‘what makes you think you have this condition?’ in the second hour, ‘what seems to be the trouble?’ Don’t GP’s know that there are intelligent, self aware people amongst their patients?

What did they think I was going to do? GO all ditsy and say, ‘Well, I don’t really know’. I wasn’t feeling ditsy that day or any other day. I’d been writing a PhD proposal just before I saw them. Secondly, when I told them I’d been depressed since I was 6 they said that I might have been miserable since I was 6 but not depressed. How dare they make a value judgement on my personality 5 minutes after having met me? If I said that to my client I’d expect to be carpeted by my Regional Director and in my opinion rightfully too. To make maters worse the receptionist persistently ignored me for 5 minutes when I went to make a blood test appointment at the end, until I picked up the leaflet. Good manners and empathy are worth nothing.