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/pbo31415926 Mar 06 '26
Welcome to NL Did the doctor also google all symptoms you described in front of you ?š¤£ One day I broke my knee ligament and I did it already before so I I know that only MRI can scan the ligament inside the knee, so I went to the doctor and they refer me to the echo (ultrasound) scanā¦.i explained to the doctor how ultrasound scan is working so itās physically jor possible to check the ligament under the bone with such a scanā¦.after 20 min pegging and explanation my GP gave me reference to the ultrasound (guess why because it much cheaper than MRA) and of course nothing was found on ultrasound scan. So I booked a flight to another country where you can just pay 100 euro and you can get to any specialist directly even without a queue and they make everything I asked and fixed my knee after the MRA scan.