
Doctor T, don’t you get tired of only seeing older patients? - happy-go-lucky
https://twitter.com/TheRealDoctorT/status/1171831596724477952
======
riantogo
Do you see little kids losing it over little things like not getting their art
work just right? Or a bit older kid getting very upset over something their
friend said? Or maybe a young graduate taking their first job extremely
seriously?

We even play along and parents share a chuckle at their “important” problems,
appreciating their young and limited perspective, and knowing everything will
be just fine. Now consider how grandma thinks of that critical deadline of
your “world changing“ project or that important deal that are losing sleep
over. I always try to think about their perspective during stressful times :)

~~~
rubber_duck
But is that stress what got the kid to be better at art ? Obsessing over what
others said led you to understand other people and yourself ? Taking your
first job seriously built habits and earned you credit among your peers ?

I don't think acting like a 70 year old in 20s/30s/40s is wise - you're not
retired with most of your accomplishments behind you.

~~~
choult
How do you know that most of your accomplishments are behind you at 70?

~~~
notzuck
It's likely a reasonable assumption but is not always true. I don't know why
people can't just say things that on average sound reasonable without some
internet police officer having to call them out?

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todd3834
There are a lot of older people in the complex where I live. They are some of
the friendliest and most interesting people I’ve ever met. It’s kind of funny
because while I’m much more interested in their stories they always seem to
want to hear about mine. I feel like the stereotype of the grumpy old man is
falling apart, at least for me. Sure they exist but most of the older people
I’ve been getting to know are very kind interesting people who don’t fit that
stereotype at all.

~~~
firstplacelast
I've always felt like people after 60 calm way the fuck down. They're done,
over it, just trying to take it slow and enjoy life.

I had a job selling newspaper subscriptions door-to-door when I was young
(like 15ish), the thing I noticed was that grumpy people are normally in the
mid-30s to mid-50s range.

I worked that job for 9 months (it was awful) and I would talk to upwards of
30 people a night, 4-5 nights a week. What I noticed (and this is all
anecdotal), 30's-mid 40's women were always very polite and would make time if
they had it, men in that range were extremely rude and had little patience for
a solicitor. Mid-40's to 60 the roles reversed, women would be a lot ruder,
but the men would be nicer and almost had an appreciation that I was hustling
and would make some time for me.

Over 60, most women and men were pretty laid back and accommodating if they
had the time.

~~~
sizzle
30's typically are settling down years and might have a young kid or crying
newborn keeping them steadily sleep deprived and agitated if I had to guess
what was behind you observation for that age group.

~~~
asveikau
My experience with raising kids is that you develop more compassion, empathy,
forgiveness, giving people room to make mistakes and correct them -- extended
towards people outside your family too. It's all very humbling.

But I am sometimes surprised when people tell me that's not a universal
feeling. At some point I came across some study claiming to show that it made
people less trusting of people outside of family.

------
ConradMcK
Seniors are some of the greatest treasures a country has. They're a living
passport into another age, and incredibly fascinating to listen to.

When you stretch out the timescale, the importance of things changes.

90 years is a long time. My grandfather is 96. The Nazi's kicked him out of
Vienna in 1938. A lifetime of lessons, of loss, of disappointment, of
excitement, of calm, of contribution.

One of the more exciting recent trends in healthcare (in my opinion) is the
emerging focus on holistic quality of life for seniors as they age and move
through their healthcare transitions. A person is more than just their
physical health; we have emotional, spiritual, intellectual, creative,
vocational, and environmental health needs as well.

Considering and incorporating those ideas into how we, as a country, take care
of our seniors is incredibly important and impactful.

I echo briandear, thank you to the person who linked these tweets.

Note: USA perspective

~~~
sosuke
Wow 96, what an amazing grandfather to have! I hope to survive as long but it
seems the my grandparents generation can't make it past 80. So much so that my
nephew thought when you hit 77 you died and that was how life worked.

------
thesausageking
I'm amazed he has time to listen to patients talk about their gardens or hear
their stories of meeting Elvis. Every doctor I know barely has enough time to
diagnose a patient and enter everything into the EHR.

Do doctors for older patients have more slack in their schedules or is there
some trick in how his practice works?

~~~
oneepic
I've personally worked with doctors that had a lot more time because fewer
patients see them in a day. They weren't older patients, necessarily, but this
doctor (General Surgery department I think?) would only see around a dozen
patients per day. Visits were scheduled for 15 mins, but could go longer if
they needed it. This doctor had quite a lot of free time. It was a moderately-
sized hospital in the Midwest.

------
matt_morgan
For 27 years I saw the same doctor. He was a GP by the time I met him, but as
an infectious diseases specialist had been on the front lines of AIDS in the
80s. I can still find old quotes from him now and again, calming people scared
about touching doorknobs.

I trusted him thoroughly, with everything. He was about 10 years older than me
and I worried what it meant when he retired and I no longer had access to this
person who so deeply understood me--exactly when I started needing him most.
This post is encouraging, to say the least.

------
XaspR8d
These are nice scenes, and I think we all could take care to remember the
unique and compelling stories behind everyone else's lives, particularly the
old. However I don't necessarily think the response is fair to the student,
who could also be asking challenging questions beyond "old people suck,
amirite?". Particularly:

\- Don't you get tired of [emotionally coping with interacting with people who
tend to have more health issues and issues with worse outcomes]? (Is it fair
to want to see healthier individuals for your own personal reasons? How does
one defend their psyche from seeing trauma so often?)

\- Don't you get tired of [having to work primarily with a population that has
a limited set of recurring problems that may not be as interesting or
rewarding to work on]? (How ethical is it to want specific kinds of engagement
from your job? Is it okay to be annoyed with individuals with preventable
diseases and injuries?)

I have a number of close friends who are new doctors, and they grapple with
these kinds of issues all the time.

~~~
icebraining
> people who tend to have more health issues and issues with worse outcomes

I wonder if that's true, from the perspective of the doctor. The stereotype,
at least where I live, is that old people will go regularly to the doctor
almost just to chat, whereas a young person will only go when there's
something wrong with them.

~~~
XaspR8d
True, though it depends a lot on the field: most of my social group works in
emergency medicine, where people don't drop in just to chat quite as often!

------
briandear
Wow. Just what I needed to read. Thanks to whomever posted this to HN.

------
oneepic
>My student doesn't seem to understand. Someday, she will.

...Or you could just tell her right now, instead of going off and tweeting
your smug thought.

Still, this was a nice set of stories.

~~~
keiferski
> ...Or you could just tell her right now, instead of going off and tweeting
> your smug thought.

Modernity in a nutshell right there.

~~~
Aeolun
\- Times I’ve learned my lesson by experience: 100

\- Times I’ve learned a lesson by advice: 0

\- Times a lesson taught by advice turned out to be false: 400

I don’t know. There’s so many things people take for granted that it is a
dangerous thing to just take someone’s word for it.

~~~
throwaway66920
So did you get hit by a car before learning to look both ways when crossing
the street? Or did someone tell you?

~~~
darkarmani
> So did you get hit by a car before learning to look both ways when crossing
> the street? Or did someone tell you?

Are you suggesting the first people that learned to cross a road got hit by
cars before realizing they had to look both ways? There was no one to tell
them how to look, so how did they learn it except by "being hit by a car"?

~~~
iherbig
Not OP, but...the advent of cars over horse-drawn carriages involved a _lot_
of deaths before both pedestrians and drivers learned. There was also a lot of
propaganda put out by car companies to change the popular conception of
roadways from being a place where people walk and children play to being a
place for cars. [1] So...it's actually pretty close to people needing to be
told to look both ways.

[1]
[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797)

------
scarejunba
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

