I hate using the term client

[ryerica22]

I don't know it just irritates me. In outpatient world, everyone uses the term client instead of patient. I feel like it undermines the role of a healthcare staff to waiters and other individuals who are just there to serve their clients and not treat them.

Just need to vent.

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[rabbott1971]

Or worse than waiters, lawyers.

 

[Nasrudin]

It comes from the argument against the positionality of doctor as expert and patient as pathological. Which is part post modernism, part positive psychology, part Rogerian psychotherapy, etc.

It's meant to empower the patient.

If I wasn't trained to think physiologically and wasn't rx-ing meds, I might use it myself. Except that I, like you, also see the problem with blanket empowerment of character pathology, or drug-seeking, or malingering, etc. Such that for acute care that separates these phenomenon, patient is actually the superior moniker in my opinion.

If I'm trying to acculturate an 18-20 year old to be a discriminating consumer of psychiatric services then I often use language that parallels "client"-type words.

So....

It's just one of those things.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

I'm a doctor and I treat patients. Your school may have taught you differently, but we went to medical school and none of the other disciplines in medicine are dealing with clients so I don't either. I get the whole empowerment thing, but if I'm diagnosing you and treating you with medical science, you are a patient and calling it something else colludes in some denial that can be worse than the "disempowerment" produced by being hit with the reality of having a disease that requires being a patient. My two cents, sorry.

 

[wolfvgang22]

I don't know it just irritates me. In outpatient world, everyone uses the term client instead of patient. I feel like it undermines the role of a healthcare staff to waiters and other individuals who are just there to serve their clients and not treat them.

Just need to vent.

Just use the patient's name and avoid the whole thing.

 

[michaelrack]

In order to promote equality, I call everyone comrade.

 

[WisNeuro]

I use patient in my notes and reports. We're all patients here and there. You go to your PCP for your yearly checkup, you're a patient. I go to the dentist, I'm a patient there. I'm fine with trying to normalize being a patient, rather than come up with some new "makes me feel better" buzzword every 5 years because someone decided that they didn't like the previous term.

 

[wolfvgang22]

In order to promote equality, I call everyone comrade.

That discriminates against us capitalist pigs! I just call everyone chief.

 

[WisNeuro]

Also, for some reason the term "client" brings to mind someone using the services of an escort or hooker. I think I'd rather be a patient.

 

[boogaaloo]

I don't know it just irritates me. In outpatient world, everyone uses the term client instead of patient. I feel like it undermines the role of a healthcare staff to waiters and other individuals who are just there to serve their clients and not treat them.

Just need to vent.

Get over it.

 

[dl2dp2]

I also consistently try to use patient. You don't have to correct people, just stick with your own terminology, and push back when people try to correct you.

The way our world is going right now, pushing for medicalization actually gets you much more than the other way around, which is perhaps ironic in its own way if you think about postmodernism as a philosophy. Patients imply disability, even if temporary. Disability implies accommodation and special treatment, which implies power to leverage for more money. Empowering "the disadvantaged" removes them from their special status ("you are just another privileged client, wait in line...", or worse yet, you don't really need a licensed provider, get a peer counselor instead), which makes it very difficult to advocate on their behalf, regardless of whether you have ulterior motives in doing such advocacy. The system is moving towards a public patient private client dualism, where the actual disability (or lack thereof) is something hidden from institutional review--and there's a lot of ambiguity in whether and when this is a good thing. I could go on...

 

[Ceke2002]

As a patient I am averse to the use of the term 'client' as well. It makes me sound like I'm rocking up for some sort of home decorating consult, like my brain would look so much better in eggshell white with matching coral drapes. My Doctor is my Doctor, I am his patient, it doesn't need to be any more or less than that.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

I work in addictions, so I frequently see patients who are clients of our treatment program.

 

[Nasrudin]

In order to promote equality, I call everyone comrade.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

Wow Nasrudin, this is rather pithy given your usual articulate loquaciousness.

 

[SeniorWrangler]

They're clients, I'm a provider (sometimes a "prescriber"), I get an hour for lunch.
The role and meaning of medicine has changed and this is reflected in the language we use, not the other way around. Doctors and other providers are skilled workers in a knowledge industry these days.

 

[Salpingo]

I don't know it just irritates me. In outpatient world, everyone uses the term client instead of patient. I feel like it undermines the role of a healthcare staff to waiters and other individuals who are just there to serve their clients and not treat them.

Just need to vent.

I assumed this was a legal requirement for social workers and therapists/counselors that don't have a doctorate-level degree, since they can't have a doctor-patient relationship.

Technically, client is a much more patronizing term (literally). It comes from Ancient Rome, when a noble/patrician would take on a commoner and provide protection/financial support in exchange for fealty -- the word itself means "to obey," but I guess now it means "I can fire you if you don't give me what I want." Since the patrons were expected to represent their client in court, it has stuck around as a legal term (i.e. the lawyer-client relationship).

Also, as long as I have the excuse to use my useless Latin, the term patient didn't in anyway mean disability -- it meant suffering, which we've just been conditioned to associate with disability. Then there's doctor, which meant teacher, not "paternalistic jerk that makes me take medicine and will get a bad Yelp review if I don't get my Xanax." Which is why PhDs can claim to be "real doctors" since they actively teach.

Of course, words change. Literally means figuratively, inflammable means burnable, PhD means fake doctor, etc (sorry, jk). But, I agree, this is not a change I'm going to be a part of or condone.

 

[Salpingo]

I work in addictions, so I frequently see patients who are clients of our treatment program.

So even though they're the program's clients, you consider them your patients?

 

[smalltownpsych]

I have always preferred the term patient. Makes me feel like a real doctor. By that I mean, I take my role very seriously and am responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of mild to serious and even life threatening conditions. I have found that many of the midlevel types that call patients clients are a bit hesitant to take on that level of responsibility.

 

[Robin-jay]

Patient sounds best.