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Randolph Warren Evans, MD

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

I read the survey by An et al¹ and the accompanying editorial by Kroenke² with interest. However, the survey design permits addressing only some of the sources of frustration with patients.

We performed a survey of neurologists,³ with the premise that although much is known about patient complaints about physicians, little is known about physician complaints about patients. We chose what we believed to be a more neutral term, ie, bothersome patient behaviors rather than difficult patients. Participants were presented with 30 patient behaviors (including the 8 in the An et al¹ survey) and asked how often they had seen patients with these behaviors in the prior 1 year and how bothersome the behaviors were to them.

The top 5 most bothersome patient behaviors from most to least were the following: not showing up for an appointment, verbally abusive with your staff, poor compliance with . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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RELATED ARTICLE

Burden of Difficult Encounters in Primary Care: Data From the Minimizing Error, Maximizing Outcomes Study
Perry G. An, Joseph S. Rabatin, Linda B. Manwell, Mark Linzer, Roger L. Brown, Mark D. Schwartz, and for the MEMO Investigators
Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(4):410-414.
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The Difficult Clinical Encounter and Bothersome Patient Behaviors—Reply
Perry G. An, Joseph S. Rabatin, Linda B. Manwell, Mark Linzer, Roger L. Brown, and Mark D. Schwartz
Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(14):1340.
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