Yelling/ combative patient.
Has anyone had to deal with a combative patient who yelled at you during the entire encounter?
I specialize in sleep medicine and also practice minor pulmonary medicine, mainly managing established asthma and COPD. My schedule involves seeing patients at the clinic in the morning and doing sleep medicine telemedicine in the afternoon. Most of my telemedicine encounters are great, but I recently dealt with a patient who is required to maintain DOT certification. So they have to be tested for OSA and undergo subsequent treatment if they meet the criteria.
Anyway, from the very beginning, this patient was agitated and clearly unhappy about needing OSA treatment. Patient kept cutting me off, eventually started yelling inaudibly, and then hung up on me. Patient needs my clinical note for DOT license recertification, but honestly, I don’t even think patient understood why we were meeting in the first place.
This was the worst patient encounter I’ve ever had, even though I’ve been practicing for a little less than a year. I wonder if it’s easier for someone to yell at their provider because the visit is online? It’s just hard to comprehend how someone could be such a piece of work and so verbally abusive. I actually feel bad for patient. I can imagine how miserable patients life must be if patient treats someone who is trying to help this way. Anyway, I just wanted to reach out.