S O M E P E O P L E ...

Some people that come in to get X-rays done leave me with a face resembling the one above...

I understand mental illness, I understand poverty, I understand that a lot of people aren’t as fortunate as others. I, as a healthcare worker treat every patient with the same respect as the one before. I don’t mind if you smell, I don’t mind if your hair is dirty, if you’ve not been able to wash your clothes in weeks, I don’t mind if you suffer from anxiety or if you’ve had a traumatic brain injury and you don’t want me to touch you. Those things don’t bother me.

What does bother me however, is when the patient becomes mad at me, uses an angry voice toward me, has no patience, naturally just assumes that I am against them because they are different. It’s hard for me to keep my cool and play nice at that point. Today was a hard one, lots of rude, angry patients. One that had anxiety and thought I was going to call the cops on her. One that got frustrated because I wasn’t explaining the exam well enough. One that was an amputee (missing left leg) and automatically assumed I was judging her for it! (I absolutely was not btw and didn’t even mention it!).

Healthcare is not easy, nor is any job requiring any interaction with people. However it is so important to treat everyone the same and hold in the facial expressions and not so kind words you’d like to use! As I learned today :)