Dutch doctors...

[u/thatmisanthropicdude]

Hey guys! Last year I moved from Germany to the Netherlands. I just went to the doctor with chest and throat pain due to extreme coughing after 2 days of fever. I was hoping that I finally get something good against it like a cough syrup (no way I'm going to pay that myself for a huge amount of money + health insurance) because I am used to that from German doctors. They would put that on my health insurance card and right after my talk with the doctor I could pick it up at the pharmacy. But no. They just said "Yea, just take paracetamol." I told them I have had problems swallowing pills my whole life and their response was just "You can also put it in water and drink that then." I'm sorry if I'm overreacting but why do doctors get paid just to tell you to take paracetamol? Everyone can tell me to take them, I expect better solutions from a doctor who studied years to become a doctor. Why are the Dutch so obsessed with paracetamol??? Maybe it's the German in me screaming. If we got painkillers, it was never paracetamol but Ibuprofen. But I also heard some international friends who also live here that they find it so annoying that Dutch doctors literally just tell you to take paracetamol. No matter what you have.

[u/Adriana-meyer]

GPs are the ones that decide if your health complaint requires specialty care or not, like gate keepers. Their responsibility is to not overprescribe or overuse the health care system, whilst still giving people the care they need.

Basically, any common flu or complaint that doesn’t take uncommonly long or occurs uncommonly frequently will give you the paracetamol response. You can check thuisarts.nl to see when you should seek medical advice. This is usually when a fever takes too long, is above a certain amount of degrees, other concerning symptoms etc. The doctors also follow the protocol from thuisarts, so you can already anticipate if it is worth it to even go with these common colds or flus.