Things that Suck About Medicine

1. People who don’t wash. Come on, folks. Soap is cheap. If I ran the hospital every patient, before being allowed to enter, would have to wash his feet, wash his crotch, and wipe his ass. Oh, and tooth-brushing, that’s important too.

2. Manual disimpaction. Enough said.

3. Overnight call.

4. Dumb, lazy, ignorant, irresponsible patients who will spend several hundred dollars per month on booze and smokes but can’t spare $15 for their Dilantin.

5. Nebulous, non-specific chief complaints like “my back hurts” or “headaches” which remain nebulous even after a meticulous review of systems and physical exam. You know, the kind of thing where when you are done spending half an hour with the patient you can only conclude, “Yes, you have a headache.”

6. Patients who think that medical students and residents make “six figures.”

7. Really, really fat patients. three-to-five hundred pounders. What’s the use? Can’t hear their heart through all the padding. Can’t palpate squat. They have every friggin’ complaint from OSA to knee pain. Their real problem is their weight so every treatment regimine we put them on is just an attempt to distract the Grim Reaper. Not to mention pelvic exams.

I bet nobody asks you, when you interview, how you will like being in a small exam room with a patient who hasen’t bathed since the Clinton Administration, is covered with his own urine, and is threatening to blow chunks or crap himself or both.