It’s heartening to see doctors thinking about ‘difficult’ patients.
Seems to me that the clue is in the concepts used in this study. A key criterion for ‘difficulty’ is ‘vague complaints’. That is, patients describing experiences that don’t fit neatly into the conceptual map their treating doctors use to understand & respond to illness.
A doctor in this situation has 3 choices. They may acknowledge the limitations of their map & seek to understand how the patient experiences their bodily distress, to see whether any part of their conceptual or therapeutic repertoire might be helpful. They could say ‘I’m sorry, my expertise does not cover this. I can’t help you’. Or they can blame the patient.
For the doctor, the first option takes time, respect & empathy. The second may feel like losing face. The third protects the comfortable fiction that ‘I am the expert and some patients are crazy unreasonable’.
I’d put money on the likelihood that people like me, whose sensory experience is atypical in ways that have not been represented in medical training, are readily cast as ‘difficult’. Especially when we have the education & skills that enable us to advocate for ourselves.
Until medical education lifts its game, it’s up to us to educate our doctors about what our own flavour of neurodivergence is like from the inside. For those of us without the privilege & skills to advocate for ourselves the obstacles are greater.
For people trained in medical sciences it can be hard to grasp that however good our conceptual map is, it’s not the territory.
#doctors #medical #HeartSink #neurodivergent #ActuallyAutistic #ignorance #empathy #respect
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/11/difficult-patients-doctors-part-of-problem?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other