The term “evil healthcare lady” refers to a type of personality and set of behaviors that, based on my personal experiences, is most commonly found in the healthcare profession, particularly among nurses, physician assistants and nutritionists (positions that are held predominantly by women). You may have heard of some medical doctors being corrupt. They do not respect patient autonomy and they see patients as inferiors who need to be controlled “for their own good”. These behaviors and attitudes have been referred to as medical paternalism. Such attitudes among healthcare professionals are not necessarily confined to licensed physicians and surgeons. Nurses and physician assistants also can adopt the attitudes and behaviors associated with medical paternalism.
A common motivation people have when they enter the healthcare profession is the desire to help restore people to better health and help people live a higher quality of life. However, not all people in the healthcare profession are good people. Some people in healthcare may have ulterior motives. Evildoers like the feeling of someone being dependent on them. In this way, the evildoers have a sense of power and control over another person that they can enjoy. While licensed physicians are higher status than nurses and physician assistants, the nurses and physician assistants interact with patients a lot more. Therefore, patients depend on them to a significant extent.
The evil healthcare lady is college-educated, often middle aged and an occupier of a predominantly female profession: nurses, physician assistants, psychiatric therapy assistants and nutritionists. She is very good at outwardly fulfilling cultural standards for femininity — kindness, empathy, emotional sensitivity. She also is good at maintaining a professional appearance and professional demeanor. On the inside, she is a surreptitious being with questionable motives, and sometimes gives out harmful advice. She is not as smart or as knowledgable as a licensed physician would be, but she likes to think she is. As such, she likes to give unsolicited medical advice to patients that she is not qualified to give, unbeknownest to the medical doctor she is working for.
There are at least three kinds of harmful behaviors that evil healthcare people exhibit:
1) Seeing an abnormality that is not there
2) Dismissal of a complaint that is warranted
3) Giving out disempowering misinformation
Pointing out an abnormality that is not there
The evil healthcare lady may tell the patient that something is wrong with him/her, not because something actually is wrong with him/her, but rather because the patient is atypical in some way and does not fit a certain mold. For example, a patient may have an eccentric personality. In response, the evil healthcare lady may tell the patient that he/she seems to suffer from some psychiatric abnormality, and should be evaluated. The patient may express certain views that the evil healthcare lady is not in agreement with. In response, she may tell the patient that he/she may be suffering from some learning disability or cognitive impairment.
Dismissal of a complaint that is warranted
Sometimes the evil healthcare lady may try to convince a patient that a complaint is not warranted when it may, in reality, be early warning signs of a serious medical condition. For example, a patient may complain about some blood in the stool. The evil healthcare lady may insist that it is just a hemorroid or an anal fissure, and nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, it may be an early sign of bowel cancer. The patient should report such things to a licensed physician, but the evil healthcare lady may convince the patient that it is not worth reporting even though it is.
A patient may come in with complaints about a persistent fever. The evil healthcare lady may assure him/her that a fever is a good thing because it means the body is fighting off an infection. Meanwhile, the persistent fever may be a sign of a persistent infection that requires antibiotic treatments, and could cause damage to the body if left untreated.
Perhaps the patient is an avid runner, and complains that he is not running as fast as he usually does, and gets tired more easily than usual. The evil healthcare lady may compare this runner’s overall level of fitness to that of the average couch potato, and tell the runner that compared to the average person, he is in pretty good shape. In actuality, the runner could be suffering from early stages of a serious disease that is treatable, but can cause more harm if it continues going undiagnosed and untreated.
Delivery of disempowering misinformation
The evil healthcare lady does not really care about her patients, so she is not going to go out of her way to make sure that the information she is presenting to them is correct. Sometimes the evil healthcare lady does not even have an understanding of basic high school level chemistry, but may still think she is qualified to discredit the science behind some treatment or dietary approach. She does not necessarily know enough science to understand the science, but she thinks that she does.
The evil healthcare lady, and many medical doctors, may tell patients that a health problem is lifelong. The evil healthcare lady will often ignore the role of lifestyle and other controllable environmental factors, and act as if our state of health is dictated only by factors that we cannot control — age and genes, as discussed in a previous article Too young to be in pain or too old to feel good.
The evil healthcare lady may shame young patients for having an ache or a pain, because they are “too young to be in pain”. Conversely, when an older patient presents a complaint characterized by a physical pain, the evil healthcare lady may to tell the patient that the complaint is a result of old age, and therefore, there is nothing he/she can do about it except “cope” and take pain medicines. Meanwhile, the complaint may be caused by an underlying problem that is perfectly solvable with the right interventions.
The bottom line is that, unlike a decent person, the evil healthcare lady does not necessarily like seeing patients restored to good health. Restoration to good health would mean one less patient dependent on her, and one less patient over which she can have some degree of power. Furthermore, she likes being exposed to other people’s problems because it makes her feel less bad about her own life.
Other abusive behaviors
Because the evil healthcare lady is a bad person, she will do things that other bad people will do. One example is gaslighting. When she gaslights, the evil healthcare lady will do so in such a way as to preserve her empathetic and emotionally sensitive façade. She may like to use the word “feel” quite a bit, which in certain contexts is an implicit way of saying It’s all in your head. It’s just how you feel. It’s not reality… If you tell her that you do not like how she is treating you, she may try to convince you that you are suffering from an episode of paranoia, and assure you that she is not out to get you.
The evil healthcare lady may also make certain judgmental comments or accusations. For example, when you present a complaint, she may accuse you of “just wanting attention”. She may call you foolish because you are not taking a drug that you were prescribed…even though the drug you were prescribed clearly is not working, or is making you feel worse.
How do you spot an evil healthcare lady?
The evil healthcare lady personality type is an extreme. In other words, you are not likely to find a person that completely matches this personality type, but you may meet people in healthcare who exhibit some of the behaviors described above. From time to time, you may see nurses give out unsolicited medical advice that they are not qualified to give. You may see healthcare workers dismiss complaints that are warranted. You may see gaslighting.
Admittedly, not all people who exhibit a certain behavior have evil intentions. Healthcare personnel sometimes show poor judgment at the patient’s expense when they are overworked. Even when healthcare workers are not overworked, they may be misinformed on certain issues. So when someone spreads misinformation, the individual may not know that the information is misinformation. The difference with the evil healthcare lady is that she does not care what is misinformation and what is correct information.
In my opinion, if the healthcare lady dismisses your concerns as being foolish, but presents no convincing argument to the contrary, that is a red flag. If the healthcare lady treats you with disrespect, that also is a red flag. If the healthcare lady tries to discourage you from trying an approach that has worked for a lot of other people, that may also be a red flag.