How does your own PCP treat you?

[newtress]

Hello to all, I'm curious to know if since you've become a nurse, or while you were a nursing student and you had to see your personal physician for a serious health issue; what was his/her rapport with you? I have recently had to sit out my last semester of nursing school d/t back to back diagnostic testing and a diagnosis requiring surgery. During the treadmill of bouncing back and forth from PCP to specialists, labs and scans, my questions or anything that sounded clinical to them seemed to put them off. Mind you I'm aware of the ego factor and was careful in my wording but Geez O Pete, it is my health and my time in their office isn't to have fun challenging them. Have you noticed a different doctor patient relationship if you are the patient, but a nurse by profession?

[newtress, LPN]

Wow, I'm glad to hear all the positive responses and experiences y'all have with your own doctors. Leads me to believe that I have had a run of bum steers when it comes to the invisible shield mine have been putting between them and me. Example: went in to PCP originally c/o RUQ pain. I was concerned not only because of the extensive abdominal distention, fatigue and SOB, but the location of the pain and lateral rib cage area looking larger than my left side. I told him it felt like it was my liver. No he's quite certain that it is cholecystitis. So I asked him if he was going to order liver panel labs along with others he said no need to. Well, labs come in normal, and still disregarding my suspected liver issue he finally orders ultrasound of gallbladder. It comes back normal. But... upon scan there is a circumscribed lesion to the liver. Bingo. A CT two days later reveals a 5cm focal nodular hyperplasia of the lateral posterior region of right lobe. Huh. I suppose I was just being an over reactive nursing student. Just really bothered me that my suggesting things to him, or will you be checking this or that, was some kind of smart alec "you think you know it all" regard he had toward me. And not just him, others as well since I have been in school. I had an endoscopy done also in the midst of all this mess and when I asked the nurse what was going in the cocktail for sedative she was anoyed. I was curious, she was anoyed. My IV had infiltrated and when I mentioned that blood was backing north up to the bag, that was anoying too. What the ?

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

My PCP told me when I started nursing school not to allow them to give me too many headaches. After school was over and I obtained my license, I had to go see him once and then, we had a heart to heart because there were no other patients, no medical assistants there. We had a great time laughing about what situations we came across, how we handled them, and so forth. He gave me alot of professional and personal advice, and now, I find that I get more from him than I did before, because we sort of bonded.

[wooh, BSN, RN]

I picked mine for a couple reasons. One, at the local hospital, her group will actually take care of you in the hospital, instead of pawning you off on the hospitalists. Two, her group only has one MD in it that I truly dislike, and even him, he's a decent practitioner, just a slimy person. She was the new one in the group, so easy to get an appointment with when I first went, and turns out I adore her. She's very matter of fact. And she has an actual NURSE in the office. When I still worked in town, had to call her about a patient of hers, and when I rattled off all the very "normal" signs and symptoms but told her, "I know there's nothing really 'off' here except him saying he feels bad, but I have a bad feeling," she didn't flinch at it, in fact told me, "Yeah, that's why I had to take him out of ICU, because there's nothing quantifiable wrong, but I've got a bad feeling too." (IIRC, within the next couple days the guy had an MI.) I really respected that she didn't mind being called in the middle of the night for a patient just being "off."