can sometimes be notorious for being the worst possible patients. Why are we frequently such bad patients, and can we do something to turn that situation around?
Nurses Know Better
Just the other day, I was talking with one of my patients about both shingles the disease and the shingles vaccine. When I mentioned that he might want to consider getting the shingles vaccine series, he asked me if I’d done it. Sheepishly, I said, “You know what? I had a pretty bad case of shingles a few years ago, and it was a miserable experience. But have I gotten my shingles vaccine yet? No, I haven’t — and if you ask me why I haven’t done it, there’s absolutely no good reason I can give you.”
Case in point.
As stated in a 2021 Medscape article by Diane M. Goodman, BSN, MSN-C, APRN, “We may believe that we can throw a bit of antibiotic ointment on a wound, cover it, and get on with our day. Worse, we may ask for a ‘curbside consult’ with a physician or advanced practice nurse we see every day on the job, believing that we can save time (and the necessity of taking time off work) if we get an opinion while working. Nurses often have a difficult time making a priority of their own self-care.”
Nurses know what’s good for them, but do we always take action? We don’t, and we’re basically like everyone else. Except for one thing: we should know better.
My story is not unusual, and it illustrates that even when we’re educated, experienced, and knowledgeable about medicine and health, we don’t always do the right thing. These are moments when we are humans first and nurses second, and our thought processes and actions don’t necessarily match the advice we would give to patients, friends, or family for the same issues we’re failing to address in our own lives.
Doctors Are No Different
If we imagine that perhaps doctors make better patients than nurses, there’s likely little evidence.
In a 2013 article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) titled, When Doctors Need Treatment: An Anthropological Approach to Why Doctors Make Bad Patients, the authors outlined several psychological barriers to seeking care, including a sense of martyrdom, a fear of being stigmatized, a tendency towards perfectionism, a strong resistance to being personally vulnerable, and a compulsive nature. Countless nurses can likely relate to the doctors’ reasoning. The authors add:
“The nature of doctors’ training results in a deep rooted sense of being special and the institutionalisation of their professional identity, with the creation of a medical self that emphasises and embodies the personality characteristics listed above. This allows doctors to do their job effectively, when they have to deal with stressful and long hours, and provides the veneer of invincibility to live and work in such close proximity with sickness.”
As the authors of the BMJ article share, doctors’ “medical self” and professional identity are so strong that it’s difficult to relinquish control and assume the role of patient. Control is an important theme here, and many nurses can likely relate to the idea of wanting to remain in control at all times, whether it’s when we’re in the role of patient ourselves, or we’re accompanying a loved one in navigating the healthcare system.
Allowing and Letting Go
Whether pursuing our medical care or simply relaxing into the role of patient and letting go of the need to control, we nurses and our colleagues have our work cut out for us.
Ignoring our needs (e.g., procrastinating on getting a shingles vaccine) is one aspect of being a bad patient. Another may be attempting to tell our providers what to do or being so hypercritical of the nurses caring for us that our opinionated judgments color our ability to accept or cooperate with any care being offered.
The authors of the BMJ article saw the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, and shared how doctors (and, we can safely say, their nurse colleagues) can become better patients:
“When doctors relinquish their medical self and become patients, the outcomes are good in terms of reduced distress and impairment and global improvement. This could be linked to the characteristics that constitute a good doctor in the first place, such as perfectionism and drive. After doctors have accepted they are patients, and fully inhabited the role of the patient, these tools can be called upon to help them recover.”
Each of us has the responsibility to do the right thing and learn to be a good patient. We can indeed learn to prioritize our own needs.
Health maintenance items like breast exams and colonoscopies (and, dare I say, shingles vaccines) don’t happen by osmosis, and the best we can do is take our advice, treat ourselves as well as we do our patients, and accept that we’re as fallible and vulnerable as anyone else. We may think we’re superhuman, but when it comes right down to it, we nurses are as human as they come.
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