Junior Doctor Anecdotes: That Time I Had To Hide From A Patient

Every now and then, I take a break from updating this blog when I feel like there is too much going on for me to write about. I usually describe this as “when my head gets too loud,” which means I need to take some time out to silence the noise. So that’s what I’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks, because if I’m to be honest I’ve been struggling a bit.

Psychiatry is hard. And very very emotionally draining. The events of the last week haven’t made things better to be honest – I am tired. It is very tiring to be a black person in the UK right now, in the light of the Meghan and Harry revelations. It is tiring to be a woman right now following the tragic Sarah Everard news. I’m just tired of it all.

Psychotherapy has been helping a lot. One of the positives of being on Psychiatry is that we (junior doctors) have mandatory psychotherapy sessions every two weeks, which involve us talking in groups about our struggles, difficult patient cases we’ve been involved with, and sharing coping strategies. The sessions are facilitated by a trained therapist, and they have been so helpful with dealing with stress and quieting a lot of the noise in my head lately. Which brings me on to the topic of this blog post – yes, I really did have to hide from a patient.

Why, you ask? Allow me to explain.

On the ward right now, there is a patient with severe health anxiety. This patient is convinced that they have every possible condition you can imagine, and constantly insists on being examined/having blood tests done/having scans requested. There have been no indications for these investigations, but still, this patient is determined to keep repeating them, threatening to kill themselves if we don’t agree to their demands. And this is why they have been admitted to the ward.

The nurses are usually able to calm this patient down and distract them when they get agitated and distressed, but all these efforts come undone when they see a doctor. And this is where I come in. I am the most senior doctor on the ward the majority of the time, especially after the patients have been reviewed by the Consultants in the morning, (yupp, #psychlife), so when this patient sees me, they immediately become more anxious, insisting that I do blood tests and examine them.

This patient is intense and unrelenting – they scream and shout and accuse me of not caring and being a terrible doctor, because I firmly remind them that there aren’t any indications for the investigations they are requesting to have done. It got so bad that I actually cried because of some of the awful things they were saying to me. I know it’s not the patient’s fault – health anxiety is a really debilitating mental illness, but I am still only human so sometimes the words get to me.

The nurses picked up on this, and deduced that my presence was most definitely a trigger of this patient’s anxieties, so they suggested that I make myself scarce on the ward when the patient is around. This has led to me having to hide from the patient in a side room on my own when I have to do jobs on the ward. Yupp, this is really truly my life right now, but I guess I can see the funny side to it. And to be fair, it’s working – the patient is a lot more calm and rational in the absence of doctors so a win/win situation, right?

Join me next time (hopefully sooner rather than later), as I continue with recounting the ups and down of life as a junior doctor. To all my dedicated readers, your comments and messages are very much noted and appreciated.