90 Doctors Who Said Appallingly Weird Things To Patients: “I Wish I Had A Girlfriend Like You”

Candace D., who started this thread on X (Twitter), is a chronic illness advocate who shares her own health journey online. "As a chronically ill person, I've had a lot of bad experiences with medical professionals and I know a lot of other people have too, chronically ill or not," Candace told Bored Panda. 

"So it's an interesting topic. I wasn't prepared for just how sad and deep the topic would be though. It was honestly really hard to read all those responses." 

Still, Candace has had her fair share of negative experiences with the medical community. "Medical gaslighting and dismissive treatment delayed me being properly diagnosed with EDS, MCAS, POTS, etc., which also delayed treatment, and I know there are so many others like me," she shares.

"If I could change one thing about how the medical system treats chronically ill patients, I would just say—PLEASE BELIEVE US. An amazing start is just listening to us and having compassion for us. No one wants to be sick," the woman reiterates.

After reading this list, you might think that everyone in the U.S. hates their doctor. But that isn't the truth. In fact, 70% of Americans are satisfied with their primary care doctor. But few feel that American healthcare is personalized: 53% say they believe that the system treats them more like a number than a person.

Many people also expect doctors to have a holistic approach. That's why 70% of American adults who come in for a checkup want their doctor to ask them about their mental health. This signals a shift from our understanding that a primary care doctor can only help with physical ailments.

Doctors make mistakes; they are human, after all. But the costs of their mistakes can often have catastrophic consequences. In the U.S., 250k people pass away each year because ER doctors misdiagnose them. Researchers estimate that a whopping 7.4 million people might get a wrong diagnosis at the emergency room.

But experts don't put the blame on the doctors. One of the study's authors explains that we have to take a look at the medical training, technology, and support that could help doctors avoid these mistakes.

Dr. Susan M. Peterson, another author of the study, explained that pointing out mistakes helps doctors improve. Like what happened with detecting heart attacks: public health campaigns, better diagnostic testing, and cardiologists and ER doctors working together resulted in more diagnoses.

Like with many of the examples you'll read on this list, many patients don't think their doctors listen to them. Their concerns get dismissed or entirely overlooked. A 2021 UK survey found that one in four patients felt like they weren't treated with respect by their physician. Another one in four claimed not being listened to.

For women and people of color, misdiagnoses and medical gaslighting are even more frequent occurrences. Research shows that women and racial and ethnic minorities are 20%-30% more likely than a white man to receive an incorrect diagnosis. In a 2024 survey, 65.3% of women expressed concern about receiving unsatisfactory or poor-quality care.

Women experience neglect in the ER, too. One study showed how women who had severe stomach pain had to spend 33% more time in the waiting room than men did. And even if women do manage to get into the doctor's office, their heart disease often gets diagnosed as anxiety, ovarian cysts as regular period pain, and autoimmune diseases get interpreted as depression.

A lot of it goes back to the history of medicine, where any major health complaint from a woman was chalked up to be hysteria. Even today, there's still a bias in the medical community where doctors may think that it's a hormonal imbalance or the woman is just making things up. 

"Female hysteria was once a common medical diagnosis for women, applied whenever women displayed 'inappropriate' emotions such as anxiety, anger and even sexual desire," Stephanie Trentacoste McNally, MD, explained. 

Until 1993, women and minorities weren't allowed to participate in clinical trials in the U.S. That resulted in the medical community not knowing whether the studied variables affected them the same way they affected white men. And we see the consequences of that today: we have a limited understanding of how women, especially women of color, experience disease and what treatments they need.

And women do tend to have different experiences. With medications, for example, women are twice as likely to have adverse effects because the meds have only been tested on men. Women who receive hip implants are also 29% more likely to experience implant failure because of differences in anatomy and inadequate testing. Until 1999, we even didn't know that women present different symptoms of a heart attack than men.

Experts say there are certain steps we need to take to rectify the problem. For starters, having more women in leadership positions for medical and clinical research. Changes need to be made in medical education: students should learn how sex differences affect medical care. And, of course, more inclusive research that includes women of low socioeconomic status, older women, and those living in rural areas.

What about you, Pandas? Have you ever had a doctor's visit turn into a nightmare? Share your unpleasant stories with us in the comments! And while you're thinking of one, be sure to check out our other posts about doctors saying inappropriate things and the worst advice patients have ever been given by a doctor.