Hello, my name is Dr. X. You need to trust me.

       Doctors don’t always like me. Why? I ask questions. I try to learn about the reasons behind the decisions being made about my health and explore all my options. I feel like I have a right to know why these decisions are being made about my body.

        This makes some doctors nervous; they think I don’t trust them. It doesn’t matter if I met them five minutes ago; they expect me to put blind trust into their choices. One example of this is a psychiatrist I saw in the psychiatric hospital. He wanted to change all my medications, taking me off of four of the drugs I was on and adding two new ones. I told him I was uncomfortable with that because it’s hard on my body to switch medicines and I knew that once I left the hospital my psychiatrist on “the outside” would want to change everything around again. The doctor said to me, “While you are in this hospital you have to trust me." The truth was, it didn’t matter whether I trusted him or not, I had no choice but to accept his decisions. They wouldn’t just let me leave the hospital and the nurses were in charge of administrating my medications, there was no way for me to take the medications I wanted to. With defeat and tears in my eyes, I said “okay.” I would take whatever he wanted to give me. After he wrote out all of my prescriptions he asked if I was okay with the changes. I shrugged and responded “I don’t think I have a choice.” He didn’t reply.

                   

          Sure enough, once I was on the outside, my psychiatrist wanted to make a few changes as he was unhappy with the choices that the hospital doctor made.

         “I would like to increase your Lamictal”

         “Can we wait a few weeks?” I asked because things had been going better for me at this point.              

        That simple question caused the doctor to go one a huge rant about how I should probably find a different psychiatrist because I didn’t trust him. There was that word again – trust. Did I trust him? Heck no! He made a lot of contradictory statements and did not show me the respect I felt I deserved. Wanting him to end the lecture, I agreed to do whatever he wanted, this time with tears and snot running down my face.

                   

       When I was getting ready to leave his office, we scheduled another appointment for two weeks. I did not keep that appointment. I once again started a search for a psychiatrist that I felt like I could trust.

                   

       In conclusion: a patient should be able to trust their doctor. But not just because the doctor tells them they have to, because the doctor shows them respect. Doctors know more about the diseases and medicines but patients know more about themselves. The two need to work together to create harmony and balance.

                   

       All right, now I want feedback. What does a doctor need to do to make you feel like you can trust them?

       And for you health care professionals reading this – how does it feel when you don’t think a patient trusts you and what do you do about it?

-Ava