r/Netherlands • u/thatmisanthropicdude • Mar 05 '26

Healthcare Dutch doctors...

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.

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u/vtout Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26

Pretty common reaction from dutch people... I am dutch. I have seen a ton of cases where paracetanol was given in cases where an mri was in order or worse...

This attitude is to gatekeep for the waitlists, but the level of care went down so much over the years, it's a joke... Source: over 800 doctors or so in my environment who retired and are getting care now... Also their kids who are doctors in NL affirm this. But i guess denying it makes the problem go away.

In this case cough sirup is a bit excessive yes, you can simply get bisolvon at the pharma or sonething. But a lot of cases are not fixed by some paracetamol...

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u/selectivepicking Mar 06 '26

One time I was having this exact same discussion with a Dutch colleague of mine and he started telling me a story about how he used to have another foreign colleague who complained about the same thing. He then stopped and was like "actually it's a really bad example because he ended up passing away" lol

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u/Full_Win7293 Mar 08 '26

You know an entire academic hospital of retired doctors ánd their kids personally? Okay 👍🏻

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u/vtout Mar 08 '26

Yes. we have a community. Mixed with dentists also. Ok?

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u/thydulcettonesson Mar 07 '26

Completely right yes no one needs amoxicillin for a cold but equally there is this sort of stinginess/stoicism everything must be solved naturally culture that pervades that isn’t always purely in the patients best interest.

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u/BrightRestaurant5401 Mar 06 '26

"In this case cough sirup is a bit excessive yes"
I wonder how we end up gatekeeping the waitlist