Doctors Who Mock Their Patients

Doctors Who Mock Their Patients Does your doctor call you names once you leave the exam room? In today’s Cases column, Dr. Michael W. Kahn writes about doctors who speak about their patients in unflattering terms, and the risk that poses to patient care. He writes:“I saw the Whale in clinic this week. Her incision looks great!”

Thus spoke a surgeon to a wide-eyed medical student here at Harvard who related the comment to her peers (and me) in a group discussion about professional development. The Whale’s condition was morbid obesity, and her incision was from weight-loss surgery.

The student was appalled at her mentor’s seeming callousness, and so were others, who eagerly shared similar experiences. They allowed that this kind of battlefield humor (out of patients’ earshot, of course was a way of dealing with stress. But they were astonished at the pervasiveness of such language and the apparent relish with which even senior physicians participated.