- Let's take a look at the Reddit thread of the worst things doctors
have said to people. I'll start, after my
professional boxing match with Chris Avila, I went backstage where
they do a medical exam and the doctor that's supposed to check you over literally goes to me, well, you're a doctor, are you okay? And I said, yeah, I feel
okay, he goes, you're good. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Check me and make sure I'm okay, check my pupillary reflexes. Don't just ask me you good bro, and consider that a medical exam. Just because I'm a doctor doesn't mean I can take care of myself, in a situation where I just
got done getting punched in the face. When I was like 20, my endocrinologist took a
good look at me and asked, are you okay with your
face being so asymmetrical? I had never really noticed it before, but boy have I noticed it since. I need more information on this because initially my reaction,
my gut was to get offended because why are you judging
someone's appearance? But then I looked at the specialty of the doctor that said it. Endocrinologist, this is
a non-surgical specialty. So this doctor is usually not
the one performing surgery or recommending to
perform plastic surgery, appear in surgery. What endocrinologists do look
for is asymmetries in glands because glands release hormones and now an asymmetry on the
lower portion of your face or perhaps your neck can
signal to the endocrinologist that something unusual is
going on in that gland. Therefore, they would be
pointing out asymmetries. Maybe they shouldn't
point it out like that where it could be easily misinterpreted, but they should say
something along the lines of, has your face always been asymmetrical? Because when you ask it that
way, then you could explain to the patient why you're asking. Because if it's been
there for a long period of time, that means nothing's changed. That's the way you were born. As opposed to if over the last two weeks you didn't notice it. But wow, this side is more full than we can act and
start an investigation. A nurse of some kind
took my blood pressure. He said what the numbers
were, I asked, is that good? He said, I'm not qualified to give you professional
opinion on the matter. You should ask your doctor. I asked, but like
unprofessionally, is that good? He said, unprofessionally, well, in my purely personal
opinion that I'm sharing with you as an individual
and not in any medical or official capacity whatsoever, you should buy stronger deodorant. Oh man. Yeah, just wait for the
professional advice. You have pretty blood followed by, I bet you have heavy periods. What, that is some vampire-ish. I've heard people say
you have pretty veins, but they're not actually commenting on the beauty of your veins. What they're commenting on is the fact that it will likely be an easy blood draw because if you can visualize
the veins, it's a lot easier to not have to re-poke you multiple times 'cause they keep missing. Color of blood does not dictate whether or not you have heavy periods
is what I'm trying to say. Not me, but mom. She's in remission for
a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that invaded her brain. She was getting a scan
to confirm the cancer had left her brain and the doctor came in and said, good news,
we've scanned your brain and confirmed that
there's nothing in there. This is a common joke. And I actually say a variant of this, if I'm looking at the
patient's ears, I say like, I look at one end and I
look at the other end. I'm like, wow, I could
see completely through, I guess there's nothing in there. Ah, a better one that I do with kids because they're always like nervous what you're looking at
and they don't know. So I say that I'm looking in their ears and I go, wow, I see someone's been
paying attention to math. It's all really sticking
in there, they go, really, I don't even pay attention in math. My gynecologist while trying to remove my IUD when the
strings weren't visible and fishing through my
cervix with local anesthesia. Thank God, okay, come
here kitty, kitty, what? In all honesty, I think he spaced out and was very concentrated
to avoid unnecessary pain. He most has definitely his cats
and the words just came out. He burst out laughing with embarrassment and said, sorry, more than
I could care to count. Honestly, I thought it was hilarious. I've been seeing him for a long time for many IUDs and he's a gem. Okay, the only thing that
troubles me about this story is many IUDs because for example, some IUDs are meant to come out after five years, although they could
stay a little bit longer and there's some that stay in 10 years. I mean, unless you've been
seeing this doctor for decades, many IUDs is kind of interesting. For those who don't know, IUD
means intrauterine device. It's like this little t-shaped thing that we insert into the cervix
that is a contraceptive. It prevents you from getting pregnant. It's actually quite effective. The strings that we're talking
about are strings at the end of it that end up coming into the vagina that the doctor then ideally
should shorten to some degree. If you cut them too short,
they could actually be sharp and you won't be able to
reach it to pull it out and put a new one in or
just remove it in general. A doctor here, and I
really hate to admit this. Very early in my career, I
was talking to a male patient. I had to ask him about penile discharge and I couldn't remember what the professional way to ask was. Do I say, no, no, that's not right. Come on, think dammit, you're a doctor. Wait, there's too long of a
silence, dong, I went with dong. An easy way out of this is
just to point to the region, say any discharge down there, and then if they have questions or they're not sure which down
there you're talking about, then you could specify. What I run into is issues with poo. Do you say number two,
like you're a 4-year-old. Do you say bowel movement
like you're a GI professor? Do you say poop like
you're now a 4-year-old and you've graduated from number two? Or do you say crap, like what, feces like, like you're an archeologist,
what is the term? I usually lead with bowel movement and if I sense confusion, I
say, poo, what would you do? - [Sam] I think I'm a poop guy,
but I'm not happy about it. - Oh, and I hate saying stool. - How does a chair make its way into your large intestine,
rectum outta your anus? You're looking pleasantly underweight. I don't know what that means,
and that is disgusting. A doctor should not put
flirtatious undertones on talking about someone's health. We learned this very
early on where we listen to someone's heart or their lungs and we're taught to say things
are normal as opposed to good or perfect because they can
easily be misinterpreted. In fact, when we do our
simulated patient encounters where we work with patients
to perform a pap smear, a digital rectal exam, which
is a finger in the bum, when we do those simulated
encounters, we're taught instead of calling the pieces of metal that patients put their heels in, instead of calling them
stirrups, call them footrests, because those carry implications. Instead of saying, I'm
gonna insert my finger, you're gonna say, I'm gonna use my digit. There's ways to make medical
exams more comfortable and I think we need to do a better job in the medical community
than saying ridiculous, like, you're pleasantly underweight. Back pain, I'm not young,
doctor just said basically, well, that's just life
for you, you're tall, so I'm just gonna end up being a hunched over 90-year-old. LOL, you're not gonna see 90. How many tall old people
have you ever seen? Yeah, okay, yeah. That's douche baggery as a person. Forget doctor, you're just being a. Not me, but a friend. She had just gone through a miscarriage after trying to conceive for a while, since she was quite young, the doctor asked, well,
you didn't really want to have the baby right. That's really, really wrong. You could be really hurting
someone who just lost a child. The question you need to ask is, well, how do you feel about this? If the patient is willing to open up and wants to share, you
can then build off of it. It's very common that a patient of mine will present the situation like I just got divorced. Typical human reaction
is to say, I'm sorry, but me as a medical health provider and a mental health provider,
I oftentimes will say, well, how does that make you feel? Because they might be like, I am so happy. That was the worst time of
my life and now I'm stoked. And I would be saying I'm sorry to that, which is not really appropriate. So now I say, how does it make you feel? And then we build off that. Your breast tissue is extremely dense, which I'm sure your husband enjoys, but it's making difficult
to get a good view. Oh my God, that's inappropriate
on so many levels. In younger women, it is common that they have more dense breasts. Therefore we don't often
just do a mammogram. If we're suspecting cancer,
we also do an ultrasound. In fact, ultrasound sometimes
gives us better views and even then it's sometimes
difficult to catch things. So you do get a more difficult
view with dense breasts. But you shouldn't talk
about people's sex lives if it's not appropriate to the healthcare. I asked my cardiologist I had growing up what the goop was they
put on before echoes. He said, yak snot, I believed
him for way too long. First of all, where was this cardiologist that they're even aware of what a yak is? Where are there yaks in such numbers that the first animal snot that comes into this cardiologist, it's not even a regular doctor. A cardiologist's mind is
yak, where are yak's homes? - [Sam] Mongolia, I think. - No, don't act like you know. - [Sam] A Chinese- - You are not allowed to
act like you know that. If you don't need these pain meds now you can save them for another time. ER doc giving me a full bottle of Dilaudid for a broken thumb. The early 2000s were a wild time. Yeah, that's, now, there's rules in place that actually the ERs can't
give long-term prescriptions. That's both good and bad. Good in that you're
preventing opioid addiction and patients overusing them, abusing them, selling them, what have you. But also it creates issues
for patients that aren't able to get in to see their doctor 'cause doctors are so booked up, therefore they're stuck sitting in pain. One time I went in for a general checkup and my doctor said,
well, everything is fine with you except for that haircut. I hope you know that doctor really well. Otherwise that's messed up. You're not depressed,
it's your personality. It took a while to get over that statement and give medication another try. Could this statement be made genuinely? I think not, because
what they're saying is not even medically accurate. You can say that you
don't meet the criteria for major depressive disorder, which has very strict DSM-5 criteria, which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
fifth edition that we use to make diagnoses of
mental health conditions. Depressed is a mood, I can
be depressed right now. It doesn't mean I have
major depressive disorder, nor does it mean it's my personality. There are people who
their personality trait can lead them to feel depressed. And there's a whole set of
personality trait disorders that can lead someone to feel depressed. There's also something known as dysthymia, which we talk about quite
often, which is a low mood, but not necessarily all
the way to full depression for an extended period of time. But saying, you're not depressed, it's your personality, is
wrong for multiple reasons. You're not depressed is a mood. You can't tell someone what their mood is and saying it's their personality is not even a medical term. Personality trait is, personality is not. If you wanna help people,
don't go into medicine. As a doctor, I'm nothing
more than a people mechanic and much like a car mechanic, I patch people back together well enough to get them out the door
until I see them again. If I could go back, I'd run as far away from
medicine as I could. I don't, if a doctor said that to you, that's kind of strange. It's a fair critique to some degree 'cause the field of medicine is plagued by a really bad system behind it. Even the idea of patching
people back together, that's a win. That's days you're giving
back to a person to be able to be symptom free and
continue on their job. See their family, do things they love. Even if you're giving them back a year until they see you again. That's a win, yeah, they
may come back multiple times 'cause humans do break. And the beauty about humans as opposed to cars is cars don't fix themselves. Humans do, and it's our job
as doctors to facilitate that healing and figure
out how to remove risks to mitigate the times that
the body does break down. Were you a teacher? Your bladder is huge, OBGYN
during a pelvic ultrasound, I was indeed a teacher. Do teachers have big bladders? Is that like a known thing? - [Sam] They have to hold it 'cause they're teaching
classes for so long. - They have a lunch and stuff. - [Sam] And would that
cause a bladder to expand? Is that a thing?
- I don't know. - [Sam] Is a bladder flexible like that? - Well, a bladder is muscular,
so it absolutely expands. It stretches, but to say
that it stretches past normal like that it doesn't rebound, that's the weird part. You have a brain tumor,
but that's fine, okay. I maybe hear the message, but I think it's delivered incorrectly. And I know people are gonna
be like, what do you mean? How's the brain tumor fine? There's some brain tumors
that are malignant. They're gonna spread, they're gonna grow, they're gonna be problematic. There's some that are benign, meaning that they're not malignant, they're not gonna spread. They're gonna stay in the area, but they can cause mass effect, which means that they
press on certain areas of the brain, which
obviously causes a huge issue and therefore they're a problem
even though they're benign. And then there's other ones that are truly just benign, benign. Well, it doesn't matter. Like you can leave them
and forget about them and you don't even need to follow them. That's on the rarer
side, but they do happen. So I'm hoping that's what
this doctor was talking about. You are really great at
relaxing your cervix. Weird compliment, but I took it dammit. She sounded so excited, can
you even relax your cervix? Like I don't think that's a thing. This is no joke, I had a
medical professional say, I used to be a heroin addict,
so I'm pretty good at this as she was putting in my IV. That's on (indistinct). Okay, some people will
see this negatively. I agree with the writer
and I think this is funny and I think it's also appropriate to say because I think those who
have overcome challenges and have experienced certain
things can provide value. And if they're being forthcoming
with that information, as long as it's not inappropriate, I think it's valuable to share. I've worked with a lot of psychologists and addiction specialists
who have suffered with addiction themselves. Firsthand experience really
goes a long way in being able to function as an empathetic provider. Following a checkup, we're going to have to remove your testicles. Just kidding, you should
have seen your face. I don't know what to, like, it depends. I know you probably didn't even
expect me to say it depends. You probably were like, no,
he's gonna critique this. But like I've gone into the
room, a patient that I've known for years has something on their arm and I go, oh man, looks like
we're gonna have to amputate. They already know I'm probably
joking, so they get it. And the reason they know I'm joking is not because of my tone. In fact, it's the opposite. My serious tone and directness, just jumping to amputation teaches them that it's a joke because
they're so familiar with me. They know that if I'm breaking bad news, I wouldn't do it in such a careless way. But again, it can only happen as a result of good long form
communication that we have, which is why it's important
to get a primary care doctor. I love that we went from testicles to talking about primary care doctors, things you should never do in a hospital. Click here to check that out and as always stay happy and healthy. (upbeat music)
