48 Doctors Share The Most Entitled Patients They’ve Ever Encountered

Not a doctor, but I had a rather memorable experience. When I was about 21, I began experiencing gallbladder issues. One night, the attack got so bad that I crawled to my roommate’s room and asked her to take me to the hospital. As soon as we got there, the nurse immediately took me in for assessment. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t talk, so my roommate gave the nurse all my information. The nurse went to get me something for the pain, and my roommate went to call my parents for me, so I was sitting alone in intake for a couple minutes. This lady comes in, literally picks me up by the arm and leads me back to the waiting area. I didn’t even realize this lady wasn’t a nurse. All of a sudden, I hear yelling, and I learned later that was transpired was that this lady was actually a patient who was mad that I went to jntake before her, led me back to the waiting room, and tried to take my spot in the intake room. She was escorted out by security.

I'm not a doctor but I was waiting to see my grandpa in the hospital. This parent starts grilling the doctors about how their "baby should go first" and how they were "obviously in pain" (the kid was looking at the fish tank). The doctor says, "We have people who are in real emergencies. Your kid just got a dried bean stuck up their nose. You can wait." The parent says ," WeLL My bAbY ShoUlD gO FiRst! He Has tO Go to BeD!" The doctor said, "Well, if your kid has to go to bed, then they can go home and you can come back in the morning." The parent was dumbfounded.

Not a doctor, but I was the patient. I had been hit by a car going 25 and I was on my skateboard (totally my f****n fault btw) and I had broken my pelvis, I had originally thought I had just popped my hip out but I was *wrong*. Anyway, I go in with my parents and I’m standing there with crutches because it hurt to sit and my mother is *screaming* at these nurses to get me into x Ray because I was obviously in tremendous pain (I was fine, I’ve had a lot worse) and I calmly hobbled up to to the nurse she was yelling at and played the “I don’t know who this lady is and I will calmly wait my turn I’m very sorry”. The nurse gave me a candy bar because I was calm and levelheaded so that was nice.

Going back many years but my favourite:

Me: *Inspect child’s rash* “It’s impetigo”.

Mother: “What’s that?”

Me: “School sores, it’s a ...”

Mother literally said: “it can’t be that, we are rich”

Me: ......

Mother: “can we see someone more senior?”

Me: *gets ED consultant to review*

Consultant: “Hello! Oh what do we have here? Oh look impetigo!”

Mother: *Stares in disbelief* asks to see a paediatric dermatologist as they can’t possibly have a “poor” disease.

ED consultant is a super relaxed guy and says “yep” and calls our most Paediatric skin specialist. He is a big deal in the paeds dermatology world and he is our weird rash expert. He comes to review the patient. We watch him enter the cubicle, a couple of minutes later exits asks for a script pad, scribbles his order goes back in hands the mother the script and she profusely thanks him for his time and expertise. She glares at us as she leaves.

Dr Weird Rash Expert turns to us and says: Impetigo. I just told her it was a unusual variant that children of wealthy people get when in the tropics.

Saw a 30yo guy who came in with complaint of chest pain. After seeing and examining him, his story sounded like GERD, but cardiac workup was started. Got called away from the module to deal with a teenager who was shot and ended up dying. When I got back the guy's mom was there and was irate that I hadn't been in to talk to her in the 15min since she arrived. I tried to explain that his workup had already been started, there were other patients in the department who also needed my attention, and many of whom were far more sick. She lost it, basically said she didn't care about anyone else and her son was the only one who matters. She wouldn't calm down, and was eventually escorted out by security.

Not a doctor, but a nurse and a mom. So this took place in an affluent community in South OC California. When my son was about 5 months old he was in the hospital for a kidney infection. So a sick baby girl is admitted into the next crib, maybe 3 months old. The father was present when the baby was admitted, then immediately took off. He said something to the effect that he was paying tons of money for his baby to be taken care of in the hospital, so he was going to go home and get a good night's sleep with his wife (who hadn't even bothered to show up). Meanwhile my husband and I are camped out at our baby's bedside through the night. Keep in mind, this is not a NICU or PICU, just a regular pediatric unit. This is not a locked unit and anyone can come in and out through the night (meaning anyone could come in and pick up their baby and leave). Well, as you can imagine, that poor baby cried all night, the nurse did her best, but with multiple patients to care for she eventually had to call the parents and demand that one of them come back in to hold their baby. They were not happy. I was blown away that they would just leave their baby like that.

I used to volunteer at a hospital and got to overhear a nurse doing her best to not headbutt a woman in all pink with a beehive hair style and giant tortoise shell sunglasses claiming to be distant relatives of royalty. It was extra hilarious because the nurse was kinda ignorant so when the woman claimed to be the second half step-cousin or some s**t of a duke of Liechtenstein I got to hear in a deep urban accent "licken-what? Liechten-stain? That not a real place now I'mma need you to go take a seat hun".

I had a lady tell me I would give her a bath because I am a nurse and it is my job (she lived at home alone and could do for herself). I explained to her my role in helping her be independent but stated we would assist as needed. I sent my big male cna to assist “as needed”, which it wasn’t.

I had some teenaged brat say she wanted to speak to my manager. I laughed out loud at her and said that this is a hospital not a McDonalds.

Last time I was in the ER a local news "anchor" came in. I actually did recognize him.

He walked by where we were sitting, and I saw him go up to the check in area and immediately demand to go straight to triage and I heard what you'd expect:

"Don't you know who I am?"

a response I wasn't expecting but made me laugh:

"I do not, and I don't really care."

and something like:

"I don't want to be waiting with all these sick people... you better not make me wait."

To which she told him to have a seat and wait.

It was really funny to listen to. It's the second local news personality I've encountered in my life, and both were super loud d***s.

A lot of pediatricians will tell you the hardest part of pediatrics isn't the patients, but their parents. It's difficult to explain to hostile parents that their 6 year old with the sniffles will be waiting longer than the 6 year old coughing up blood. We have a specialized children's ER in our state, and many parents bring their children with simple ear infections or colds here instead of their family doctor, because they know the ER has senior specialists. It's a huge burden on the public system. Especially when they act shocked that they have to wait 4 hours after being triaged, and abuse the nurses for it.

Their fears are understandable though, they want what is best for their child. I'd take over-involved before under-involved, any day of the week. Child abuse and neglect is seen in both ER and outpatients, alongside atypical cases. In outpatients there was a child with significant language delay. She was tested for several things like autism, and it turned out her parents just didn't really speak to her. The father worked a lot and the mother openly admitted she just wasn't 'interested', so wouldn't take her to play groups, the park, talk to her, etc.

The mother was extensively interviewed for long-term postpartum depression, both were screened for mental health or domestic issues. Ultimately they were right, they just weren't...interested. The child hadn't been planned, and they just weren't deeply invested in the child-parent relationship. The child was otherwise well looked after in this upper middle class family, but was utterly emotionally neglected. They believed feeding and clothing her was sufficient for normal development. It was bizarre and entitled behaviour.

ER nurse here. Had a minor local celebrity show up in the middle of the night for back pain. He had another man with him, so I asked how they were related. The visitor stated that he was the patient's chauffeur and personal assistant. The visitor then proceeded to inform me of the patient's identity, as if I should be grateful to be taking care of this celebrity.

Woo. Go him, I guess. Having not grown up in the area where I live now, this meant I had literally no idea who he was. Honestly didn't care and still don't.

The visitor also told me that money was no object and that the patient required only the best care and if that meant a helicopter to a specialist or whatever, they could make it happen. The ER I work in is a large academic medical center with more specialists than it knows what to do with. We get people flown in to see them, not usually the other way around.

Spent the rest of the night running back and forth while he screamed bloody m****r over his back pain and his personal assistant followed me around expecting me to cater to his employer's every whim. 1/10, do not recommend.

TLDR- Local celebrity dragged his personal assistant out of bed for his back pain, came to my ER and became my a*s pain.

Nurse here. My colleague was discharging a patient and, in the process, asked if he needed his parking validated. He sneered at her and responded, “I’m on the board of this hospital. I don’t need your validation to do anything.”

Turns out he was a local philanthropist and multimillionaire, and I guess we were supposed to know that.

Got dispatched for ETOH in the bar scene in my area. As my partner and I pull up we see this guy start limping over. We unload the stretcher and he goes “hey I think I twisted my ankle, I need an ambulance.” Well our patient that we were originally called for is passed out on the ground in their own vomit. We tell him that we can call for a second rescue for him if he needs it because we have to attend to our etoh patient. Or we tell him that he can just take an Uber to the nearest hospital which is five minutes away. He goes “well I have really good insurance so the ambulance ride will cost about the same as an Uber, which one will be faster? Then this guy proceeds to stand around huffing and puffing about how it’s “ridiculous” that he can’t just hop in with us because “you guys are going to the same hospital anyways”. Dude this isn’t a ride share Uber and we ain’t carpooling?

During my surgery rotation in medical school, I was (peripherally) involved in a trauma code in the emergency room. The trauma victim was intubated, had two chest tubes, blood everywhere. By the time it progressed to pericardiocentesis (a needle onto the sac of the heart to remove any blood outside the heart but in the pericardium that can be the cause of cardiac arrest in trauma) a lady grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the trauma bay, yelling at me that her daughter in the room next door was cold and needed a blanket.

Not my last encounter with entitled patients and families, but one of the most memorable.

Don’t remember all the deets now but years ago in the ICU we had been coding a patient multiple times, very hectic on the unit. We had aneedy family on the unit who was very upset and said something along the lines of “i don’t care if someone is dying….we’ve been waiting for (insert food / drink selection) for over an hour”. I’m sure my face said it all.

A patient was coughing up / throwing up large amount of blood, was dealing with EMS to send her to ER (this was in a rehab), got to my next patient at 9:10pm, his pain-meds were due at 9pm.

He was livid, I explained why I was slightly (like 10 minutes) late, and he said, “I don’t give a s**t about anyone else. Let her f*****g die for all I care, just make sure my meds are on time, little girl”.

Little girl? I was 50 at the time.

When I was a fresh EMT one of my first calls was for a lady with "abdominal pain". The pain was pretty non-discript and seemed to move around, and the pt could be fairly described as b****y in demeanor.

As we are loading her up, she says that she needs to go to a hospital in a major city, about an hour away from us. This route would have included passing 3 suitable hospitals. This got my partner and I exchanging some glances. So, paramedic partner says, "no, we can take you to the nearest appropriate facility." This upsets the pt, who begins screaming about customer service and the like.

Well, we happen to work for a s****y private company that shall remain nameless, one who prides itself on meeting each "customer's" needs. We know that if we deny this lady, we will get written up and the manager will say something like "we need to serve our customers, and besides we can charge double rate after you pass the first hospital."

F**k anyone else in our ASA who might need help, executives want that cheddar.

So we negotiate the pt down to a hospital in a suburb of said big city, about 40 minutes away. When we arrive, she refused to stand and transfer, so we get a nurse and pull her over to the hospital bed from our gurney.

Now here's the punch line. As soon as the nurse lowers the hospital bed down, the pt kicks her feet over the edge, stands up and begins to walk out of the room. Nurse asks her where she is going, and the pt responds "I'm leaving, I have to get to *big city* for my appointment."

My partner, with perhaps his very last breath of good will says, "why didn't you tell us you had a medical appointment to go to?" Pt replies loudly, "HAIR appointment, and now I'm going to have to hitch hike because YOU wouldn't drive an extra 15 minutes!"

Nurses, partner and I all stand there gob-smacked.

Nurses look at her record, she has checked out AMA from different facilities in their medical group, after being brought in by ambulance more than 10 times. She's on a public health plan and clearly has no intent to pay a cent for any of it.

On our way back, partner and I call manager and report what happened. Manager knows the pt, grumbles a bit and basically says they won't do anything about it. Partner and I guess that the company finds the tax write off from an unpaid bill more valuable than the time of its staff and safety of people living in our ASA.

And now I work single role for a fire agency.

There was a woman in my response area who could have put the majority of people on My 600 lb Life to shame when it came to her size, disconnection to reality, entitlement, and immobility. She also of course had a horrible enabler of a niece living with her who continued to feed her- both food, and lies about how much she deserved from society. She lived in a ground floor condo that had three steps leading up to the front door. Why she had purchased a house that she physically could not enter or exit on her own when there were handicap accessible units available in the same building is beyond me, but she did. Any time she needed to leave the house, for whatever reason, she would call 911 and smugly wait for two units to go out of service to wrangle her out of her house into her niece's car for her weekly trip to Walmart. When she wanted to go back in to the house, same s**t- 911. Obviously this was a nonemergent response, but if we took too long, she would call 911 repeatedly until we arrived. If we got diverted to an ACTUAL emergency and took too long, she would shower us with all manners of profanities as we dragged her 650 lb a*s into the house and tucked her into bed. One time a crew knocked over a photo of her late Yorkie by accident and broke the frame, so not only did she submit a bill to the county for damages, she also started filming every interaction with EMS and would post it on Facebook live. There were days when I would have had at least four calls to deal with her b******t. And God bless our supervisor- not only did he offer to assist her in getting the County dept. of Disability Rights involved to install a ramp for her, he also personally volunteered to build a ramp for her himself on his carpentry company's dime, but she still refused to do anything about it. This went on for two years before I moved away, so I don't know what ever happened there, but I hear that the Sheriff's dept was finally warming up to the idea of slapping charges on her for 911 abuse.

When I worked inpatient, it was peds Neurology. One of my coworkers once was taking care of a teenager with a headache (the most annoying patients on that floor when we're literally taking care of children with brain tumors knocking on death's door every day). IIRC the Mom bi***ed about everything. At one point she asked her nurse when the Neurology team would be rounding. The nurse responded "they're rounding now." Mom scoffs "well, I would have thought they would start with the sickest patient on the floor." They did. My patient who was a young adult with Marfan syndrome who'd had a stroke and was on a heparin drip.