[Flubflow]

Originally Posted by Salu

I started it because I am interesting in the psychology of Dr to patient relationships. There will be a lot of politically correct answers given here as people feel the need to say the "correct" thing but I know from discussions that I have had that patients are put off by much more trivial things such as "the way he looked at me" or "he didn't look at me" or his dress sense etc.

Of course there will be people who genuinely do not care though....

Here's something wierd for you Salu.
Our fantastic family GP retired about 15 years ago. Since then I've only been to the doctors about 3 times. I've never actually seen our replacement GP yet. Those times I went it was at very short notice and I always seemed to get this one other doctor who was the only one who seemed to be available for urgent appointments. About 10 years ago she seemed quite normal, if a little more casual in appreance than you'd expect. No problem. However, the last couple of times I saw her I noticed that she had put on quite a bit of weight, was wearing a man's suit, had very short hair like a lad and, this was the clincher... she had grown an alarming amount of moustache. Oh, it was really quite nasty. I'm not quite sure what the story is there but I have a few theories. That's the problem, one doesn't know what the story is and you can certainly understand the average person feeling ill at ease (which is not ideal when you are also feeling generally ill anyway!) and one doesn't really dare to ask. The doctor's performance as a doctor was not questionable at all.
Given the choice of waiting and suffering slightly to see my own GP or being able to get a more immediate appointment see her again then I'd have to admit in all honesty that I'd prefer to wait and suffer physically rather than suffer the worry about what further transformation may await me behind her surgery door. I don't know what the patient psychology of all that is about but I suppose you could say that it was a fear of the unknown more than a fear/hatred of something that is against the norm (especially if you don't particularly like going to the doctors anyway).

Of course sod's law will dictate that when I eventually get to see the proper family GP for the first time would be to discover that he wears a dress, make-up and a big blue-rinse hairdo .