BLOG: Four reasons your patients don't like you

Although getting your patients to like you isn’t your first priority, having patients actively dislike you can be the key to dwindling clients and a floundering clinic.

Here are just a few reasons patients might dislike you and some ways you can try to fix this potential problem.

4. You’re late

This one is self-explanatory. Every doctor gets stuck in an examination that takes too long or winds up scheduling too many appointments for a day. It happens and — in many cases — it can be difficult to avoid.

However, if you are late to the first appointment of the day or otherwise are consistently late to appointments for the same patient, that annoyed feeling your patients get will become increasingly difficult to write off as time goes on. Schedule appointments intelligently and stay professional — it can go a long way toward improving your patient-doctor relationship.

3. You don’t address them, you address your clipboard

One of the biggest mistakes I see young doctors make is allowing their clipboard to become the focus of discussion, not the patients themselves. It’s easy to get the reports back, read off the results, rip off a prescription and send patients on their way; what’s not easy is relating to them and telling them precisely what those results mean.

Don’t just rattle off medical babble to them without translating and, perhaps, putting a positive spin on it. Make sure patients know you’re talking to them – not just trying to get them out of the office so you can move onto the next patient – and the experience will be much easier for your patient, which is precisely what you want.

2. You talk down to your patients

Sadly, stereotypes mostly grow from grains of fact, and blowhard doctors/doctors who are full of themselves (as I’m sure you know) certainly exist. While being this way without a doubt has its personal drawbacks, the issue becomes far worse when you allow this behavior to follow you into the office and becomes apparent to your patients.

Before I continue, let me set things straight: yes, you certainly want to come across as cool, confident and collected. This imparts a sense of expertise, which you obviously need as a doctor. However, you do not want to discount your patients’ concerns out of hand or make them feel stupid just because they’re wrong about something. This kind of behavior doesn’t just make patients dislike you, it also may make many become reticent to bring something up that’s actually relevant to your diagnosis.

Make your clinic a safe place where patients can bring up their concerns, no matter how mundane or outlandish they may be. That way, your patient won’t ever feel uncomfortable around you, and you may learn some information that could save a life.

1. Your office staff is unfriendly

Do me a favor: go on Yelp, find the closest doctor to you with bad reviews and read them. Chances are that you will see a wide range of complaints concerning not the doctor, but the staff that greeted them when they walked in the office.

Sometimes they were ignored, sometimes the staff were brusque with the patients, sometimes they simply looked unhappy to serve. Whatever the case, this almost always reflects on you, even if you are a perfect peach the entire examination.

Although it’s not always your staff’s fault (let’s be honest, working the front desk anywhere can be a truly trying experience), you still need to make absolutely sure all patients are greeted cheerfully, knowledgably and understandably. If you don’t, you not only are opening your practice up to bad reviews, you are also possibly losing a patient while attracting their ire.