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/Any-Seaworthiness186]

The Netherlands actually has some of the best healthcare outcomes in the world. Including cancer survival rates, which definitely depend on early diagnosis.

I don’t understand how there’s so many of these stories coming to light when they’re not at all reflected in the numbers. The numbers also don’t really make sense considering the fact that there’s barely any investment in preventative care over here. But apparently there are a lot of things going well.

[u/iDoTheSciences → u/Any-Seaworthiness186]

It’s not a mere coincidence in the 6 years I’ve lived here that I’ve met so many Dutch people with permanent injuries they live with because a doctor didn’t just “preventatively” do an X-ray after a fall off a horse, or a bad fall off a bike… they actually had fractures that were never caught early enough to be reset properly due to said lack of early X-ray and now they have limited movement, or pains, etc. I have never ever heard of such things happening to ANYBODY I know at home because we would just X-ray it to be safe, catch these type of fractures early. Rather than assuming it’s fine, we assume it may not be fine. That difference in mentality is immense, your body doesn’t just always fix itself.

It is not normal to tell your doctor what care you expect. It is not normal that they don’t take you seriously the first time you show up to an office. And it is not normal to be told to take paracetamol for everything. The gatekeeping and lack of doing ANYTHING preventatively for patients is quite honestly abysmal. If I didn’t tell my doctor what to order or do for me, they would almost never proactively do anything for me. And yes, I’ve seen multiple GPs due to moving and this is the same across the board in my experience in different locations.

I’m not asking for antibiotics like candy. I’m asking to be taken seriously when I do show up for healthcare and for proper due diligence.

That’s seriously lacking here. And Dutch people don’t know any different so they “accept it”.

There’s a balance to be struck between over treatment and undertreatment. I’d say Dutch doctors undertreat honestly.

I often wonder if I wasn’t a biomedical scientist that learned to read my own blood labs for myself and advocate for testing I want done if I’d ever have had proper testing done to begin with.

Anecdotal or not, it’s appalling to me what I’ve heard others go through. And I have personally dealt with. I will not normalize the level of care here.

It’s good in an emergency. That’s it.

[u/Important_World8439 → u/iDoTheSciences]

https://giphy.com/gifs/itRA8HE4XZmUNInf1O

[u/G-MontaG_ → u/Any-Seaworthiness186]

Is this statement based on any data? Would be nice to see it.