What type of patient am I?

Anxious, skeptical, optimistic or resigned: Every person has an individual personality with distinctive character traits. This has an impact on medical treatments

Anyone seeking medical advice comes into the doctor’s practice with a personal biography and their own story made up of experiences, expectations, and life circumstances.

Every one of us has our own individual personality with our own unique character traits and typical ways of reacting to things. Some of us are optimistic and open-minded by nature, while others are more fearful and sceptical. Such personality traits are partly determined by our genetic make-up, but they are also shaped by our upbringing and the experiences we’ve gathered in our life.

Anyone seeking medical advice comes into the doctor’s practice with a personal biography, their own story made up of experiences, expectations, and life circumstances, and their own unique personality traits. Most people show “typical” patterns of behaviour in their role as a patient. Taking this “patient type” into consideration in the communication between doctor and patient may help increase the success of treatment.

It’s perfectly natural to feel anxious where one’s health is concerned. However, anxious patients are scared of any diagnosis or treatment and pessimistically expect treatments to have strong side effects or to not even work for them at all. When talking to doctors, anxious patients are restless, stressed and tense, affecting their ability to concentrate. Anxious patients often do not absorb important information completely or correctly. They interpret not only what is said, but also the doctor's facial expressions and gestures, more negatively than may actually have been intended.

If you think you are prone to this, it is better to take a trusted person with you to the consultation. By doing so, you can check later whether your perception was perhaps too negative.

In any case, this type of patient needs to be given information in a particularly sensitive and gentle manner, in the attempt to eliminate concerns and ease worries. Clear explanations without medical jargon, as well as words of encouragement, can be helpful. If the anxious patient trusts the doctor and the doctor’s recommendations, he or she can ultimately adopt a positive attitude towards the treatment, which can in turn improve treatment success.

This type of patient is generally distrustful and suspicious of doctors and medical personnel. Sceptical patients only have the negative details of previous experiences ingrained in their mind, often doubt the doctor’s competence, and initially call any medical information into question. Sceptics have gathered detailed information in advance, which they use to evaluate what the doctor says – doubting the doctor if he or she contradicts this prior information.

If you find yourself feeling distrustful or sceptical as a patient, don’t try to hide it. Feel free to tell your doctor or treatment provider, as this will make it much easier to have an open conversation.

A good doctor-patient relationship can only develop if the patient’s doubts are dispelled and the patient is involved in the treatment decisions. Providing detailed information and explanations as well as emphasising the patient’s right to have a say in his or her treatment can help to reduce scepticism and build trust.

For optimists, the glass is always half full and they believe that their health is actually fine. If they do have a reason to visit the doctor, they presume that it won’t be anything bad – or that the doctor will recommend an effective treatment. Optimists often don’t want to know too many details about their ailments, preferring to live by the motto “Everything will be fine”. They tend to take the more serious issues, urgent advice and medications more lightly. If you’re this type of patient, it’s advisable to take a trusted person along with you to any important discussions about diagnosis and treatment. This can help to open up the other, more critical side, which optimists are quick to suppress.

Optimistic patients have the best chance of a treatment going very well because they subconsciously draw on the healing effect of positive expectation. Doctors do not have to work hard to convince optimistic patients; at most, they need to emphasise that the patient needs to finish the full course of a prescription and not simply say “Everything’s fine again now” as soon as there is a slight improvement.

Patients who have persistent symptoms, for which doctors have found no concrete cause or have not been able to offer sufficient help, will at some point become resigned. This is understandable. The rollercoaster of hope and disappointment that comes with every new treatment attempt makes it difficult for the patient to stay positive. The expectation “It won’t work this time either” acts like a self-fulfilling prophecy: It comes true because the patient believes the treatment won’t work and focuses on details that confirm this belief. If the patient has no faith in a treatment, the outcome is indeed likely to be worse than it should be. Here too, it is advisable to be clear with your doctor about how often you’ve already sat in the waiting room feeling hopeful for relief in the past, and that you’re now feeling disappointed and hopeless. Then, the doctor might be able relate to you personally in a completely different way, and will be better able to understand your resignation.

To break the vicious cycle of negative expectation and unsuccessful treatment, resigned patients should ask for and make use of additional help for their mental state - and then tackle their physical suffering with renewed courage. Many clinics offer such support, which is very helpful and an important component of the actual treatment.

Perhaps you’re a mixture of all of these types, or you alternate between several of them? Either way, we hope we’ve given you food for thought and some useful tips for your next visit to the doctor.