It’s the question The Shrink is asking over there, so I thought we ought to ask it over here as well.
Seems like all the good doc’s patients want to be called – well – “patients”. Not clients or users or service users, but patients.
“Service user” suggests the voluntary exercise of choice. I choose to use the services of BT Yahoo for my broadband, for instance. if I am unsatisfied with their service or want something they can’t offer but another service can, I am free to take my custom elsewhere. For many, many patients, this kind of choice is just not available, so describing them as service users is mendacious.
“Client” is just awful. It’s something a prostitute has.
If I go to my GP’s surgery, I’m a patient. I become one the moment I walk through the door and continue to be one while the GP or the nurse is seeing me. Of course, I also continue to be one after I walk back out through the door, because I’m on their list of patients, although I don’t go round thinking of myself as such. However, if someone from the surgery were to meet me outside and describe me as “one of Dr Crippen-Rant’s patients”, I wouldn’t complain.
Why is the word “patient” considered so loaded? I suspect some of my lecturer colleagues might wibble on about empowerment, and chuck in a few buzz words like recovery, but I don’t find that convincing. I don’t consider myself any less “empowered” because Dr Crippen-Rant calls me his patient. But crucially, I don’t feel any more “empowered” if I describe myself as Dr Crippen-Rant’s client or a user of GP services.
Perhaps I don’t get it because I’ve never been a patient/client/user of mental health services. Maybe it’s to do with historical resonances. Maybe it’s because it’s seen as pejorative or patronising. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve heard “client” and “service user” spat out with as much contempt as if the person were saying “looney” or “nutter”.
Sufferer,survivor, mental unhealth are all annoying too.I prefer to be called PATIENT.
The OT department of my unit did a survey on what everyone thonght patients should be called. The patients voted overwhelmingly (of the 20 or so that replied anyway) to remain patients, whilst the management voted for service users…most of the nurses didn’t have time to answer, what with all the bedpans to empty
I think some of our forensic patients like the abdication of responsibility the term patient offers. And like you say, the idea that anyone would ‘choose’ to use services (ie choose to be mentally ill) is quite silly.
I wrote about this in a Patient Carousel post many moons ago. Actually, I pinched what Bipolar Mo, as a patient, had to say on the issue. Well worth a look if you care to trawl the archives.
Of course, it`s nothing to do with what patients themselves think. It`s all to do with layers of management, with thinning in trays, trying to look busy and portray themselves as advocates. Still, the printers and signmakers do very well out of it. There will be a few strategy meetings and focus groups too. We`re geting to the bottom of the biscuit shortages on the wards.
Definitely patient and then take the time to discover what the patient would like to be called – Mrs/Mr/Dr/forename/nickname etc.
True story.
A friend of mine worked at a residential centre for young people with disabilities, and they were trying to decide what to call them.
“Residents” was rejected on the grounds that this would imply that this was their home, when in fact it was supposed to be a temporary stop-off before moving on to independent living (this conveniently ignored the fact that some of them had been there for 10 years, but there you go).
“Clients” was also rejected, for tortuous, politically-correct arguments too tedious to detail here.
In the end, somebody decided that since they were there in order to seek an independent lifestyle, they were henceforth to be known as “seekers”.
I mean, seekers? Why not just call them Padawans of the Jedi Order and be done with it?
…and when a new person came they formed the New Seekers? I’ll never find another you…
Patient. What is wrong with patient?
I hate all those other words. They annoy me.
Has to be patient. I speak as a service user. I find anything else both irritating and insulting. Am sure all suggestions of alternative names come from management and consultants with very little input from patients.
I’m a patient.
My appointments are held in a psychiatric hospital, not a beauty salon.
Ha! In America, psychiatric patients are called…wait for it…’comsumers’!
Consumers? *retches*
Wretches ?
Bit blunt but possibly descriptive in some cases …
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