Absolutely true, word-for-word text I got from D1 this afternoon–
“Today a really agitated patient spit in my mouth. Oh what college guidance counselor never tells you”
It is sad and feel sorry for your D. The whole process expects students to be empathetic and humane all the time. But patients can do whatever they want!
It’s a risk. It’s horrible. Once in internship I got splashed in the eye (I think) with a droplet of blood from an HIV positive patient when the resident threw a bloody sponge at a wastebasket, and it hit the rim of the basket. I worried (and didn’t have unprotected sex) for six months. I knew a resident who had a patient with some horrible form of viral encephalitis cough and sputter in the resident’s face. She caught the virus, developed encephalitis, spent months in the ICU in a coma. Never fully recovered. And neither of these were intentional!
There have been incidents where crazy patients in ERs attacked physicians and nurses, even murdered them. And still, we keep going back in, out of a sense of commitment to the job.
Most doctors today advise their children not to go into medicine.
D1 was assaulted (grabbed by the throat) by patient who managed to get out his restraints when she was PGY1. One of her co-residents had his arm broken in 2 places recently by a patient having a psychotic episode. And he’s a big guy, ex-military.
I was looking at the research literature. I expected psych and EM to be dangerous, but even a pretty surprising number pediatricians, FM and IM physicians report being assaulted by patients or family members.
Re: #3
For every violent episode, how many non violent incidents of ranting bigotry or other nastiness do physicians encounter?
One NIH study has some statistics. Even if somewhat exaggerated, it sounds serious.
“ It was found that majority (85%) of the physicians has faced mild events, 62% have faced moderate events and roughly 38% were subjected to severe violence. “
If you throw in years of intense study, possibility of catching infections, long work hours, stressful environment and PTSD worthy dealings with pain and death, it’s not the greatest lifestyle.
If someone really loves it and has lasting compassion then it’s okay but if you are in it for only money than use similar efforts to master acting, singing or ball throwing.
Lot of people take physicians for granted and some even ask physicians to pay for their care. If you are treating kids,have to deal with helicopter parents 
S understood he was getting into business of treating patients but it’s having to deal with the unexpected, unrealistic demands or expectations of family members that he was clueless about. A couple of times hospital security had to be alerted to try to calm things down. There’s a code color to alert security for these situations which I cant remember.
I think I mentioned on another thread that my D had a patient hit her on the head with a rolled up magazine. He didn’t think she was the real Dr. Not as bad as the others on this thread, but I have no doubt something else will happen in the future.
I am surprised that all these medical students expected all their patients to be nice. That was very naïve.
Had any worked or volunteered in a hospital while undergrads? To expect pre-med advisors to explain it all is unrealistic.
@TomSrOfBoston, this happened to my daughter as a second year resident in your town of Boston. And @WayOutWestMom daughter is a PGY4, IIRC, not a medical student.
It’s not that they didn’t know that things could occur, but still very shocking when they did.
@CottonTales Our family doctor worked as a hospital orderly summers while in college. He was sometimes assigned to the ER. He knew what he was getting into first hand. So many premeds here on CC are asking about getting summer research opportunities when hospital experience would be more beneficial.
Well, from the family member’s perspective, I can understand the frustration. I felt like screaming a few times during my son’s recent 70-day hospital stay. Unbelievable the way the ball was dropped, more than once. 
I filed one complaint and should probably talk to the hospital about our experience.
D1 is not a med students; she’s PGY4 and will graduate from residency in 2 weeks. D1 had been an AEMT before med school and had handled combative patients. So she’s not surprised by the violence, but she is rather disgusted by commonplaceness of the assaults against medical personnel. It’s at the point that most medical staff never even bother reporting assaults because nothing ever gets done about it. Also the perception is–at least among physicians & nurses–is the number and severity of assaults against medical personnel has increased sharply over the past 5 years.
But I do agree that pre-meds need to spend more time working on the wards instead of working in a research lab.
@TomSrOfBoston, this thread is about actual Dr.s getting mistreated. Most, including my daughter had hospital exposure before med school but never knew that they could, or would be assaulted in any way.
Just saw @WayOutWestMom post and that says all that I tried to.
As I said above I find this to be naïve. If a drug addicted or other mentally impaired person becomes violent s/he is not only going to assault medical support personnel.
I will never forget on psych having a patient who, to quote the note in their chart “defecated aggressively towards staff”
@TomSrOfBoston, that is rude for you to assume that aspiring Dr.s or even some new ones would assume they would be assaulted and are naive. Certain specialties such as EM or Psych could possibly know there are going to be incidents. My kid is a surgeon, why would she assume a patient would hit her on the head doing a post op check? My kid is not naive. She could have had the patient removed from the hospital for assault but did not.
I’m thankful my son doesn’t remember some of his behavior during his hospital stay.
@iwannabe_Brown, if there was a disgusting button I would have pushed it.