Patient Anger

Anger is not the best emotion to feel, especially when going through a diagnostic imaging procedure. A patient’s feelings can range from feeling claustrophobic to feeling incredibly sad, and yet, anger is still the most difficult one. It doesn’t matter if it’s an MRI, CT scan, or something more complex, there is always something to stir up a patient’s emotions. It doesn’t really matter if a patient is an adult, a child, or even a senior citizen.

Often times a patient’s anger comes after some sort of negative diagnosis. When you tell a patient that he or she may have a tumor, you get a real blast. The problem comes because patients feel that they should be able to know when something’s wrong with them and why. Often times it’s difficult to order specific tests because tumors may not really show up. Complex conditions do not necessarily show up right away and symptoms are not always reflective.

Sometimes it’s hard to respond to a patient simply because it’s difficult   to make an angry patient understand certain factors. In an article on www.medscape.com the ideal response is explained as “The correct answer is that he hadn’t received an MRI yet because he looked pretty well, because there were no red flags in his history and physical to date, and because most of the time, the symptoms he’d been having would have been the result of a bulging disc, and would have responded as well to conservative treatment as to surgical intervention.”