Medicolegal advice* on firing terrible patients

*It absolutely isn’t.

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Do you have a difficult patient on your books? A nemesis who unfailingly ruins your entire day?

If so, Professor Candid can help. 

1. Speak with your medical indemnity provider and meticulously plan out what you’re going to say. Explain to the patient that unfortunately you’re unable to provide their ongoing care, appropriately safety net them, suggest an alternative service, remember to have a box of tissues ready because there may be tears, and then brace yourself for that inevitable AHPRA referral. 
2. Move. And by move I mean move to Peru. Sometimes this is the only way to escape. Wearing a disguise would also be a good idea. The problem is when you finally get to Peru the patient will probably be waiting for you with their list of medical problems freshly made up that morning. 
3. Go strange. Make yourself stranger than your patient. Dye your hair pink, shave off an eyebrow or better still start wearing an eyepatch, smile at them for a disturbingly long time or wheel a full human skeleton into your room and refer to it as Boris. Whatever it takes, as long as it freaks out the patient there’s hope they’ll never come back. 
4. Transcend. While the patient is demanding an MRI scan of their thumb or wants their total body cadmium levels checked, put a great big pair of headphone on, close your eyes and play Josh Wink’s Higher state of consciousness at maximum volume. While chair dancing you’ll transcend the immediacy of the consulting room and with any luck the patient will get the hint and take their thumbs and their unrealistic expectations elsewhere. 
5. Bite the bullet. If all the other options seem like hard work then just keep on seeing the patient until they grind you into purposeless anaemic pulp. To be fair, this is how most GPs cope. Which brings us neatly on to gin and tonic.  
6. Gin and tonic. This speaks for itself really, less of a coping mechanism, more of a lonely, juniper-soaked freeway to self-destruction. But remember, your arch-nemesis won’t drown in a glass of effervescent G&T, they’ll just float teasingly on the surface, like some kind of smug icecubey bastard.