Taking Care of the Hateful Patient

Abstract

"Hateful patients" are not those with whom the physician has an occasional personality clash. As defined here they are those whom most physicians dread. The insatiable dependency of "hateful patients" leads to behaviors that group them into four stereotypes: dependent clingers, entitled demanders, manipulative help-rejecters and self-destructive deniers.

The physician's negative reactions constitute important clinical data that should facilitate better understanding and more appropriate psychological management for each. Clingers evoke aversion; their care requires limits on expectations for an intense doctor–patient relationship. Demanders evoke a wish to counterattack; such patients need to have their feelings of total entitlement rechanneled into a partnership that acknowledges their entitlement — not to unrealistic demands but to good medical care. Help-rejecters evoke depression; "sharing" their pessimism diminishes their notion that losing the symptom implies losing the doctor. Self-destructive deniers evoke feelings of malice; their management requires the physician to lower Faustian expectations of delivering perfect care. (N Engl J Med 298:883–887, 1978)