Visiting the doctor's office can be a stressful, yet necessary evil. Not only because if we are visiting the doctor there may be something wrong, but also because we have to re-arrange our entire life in order to make the appointment. Once we are at the doctors we usually have to wait, exposing ourselves to other patients who could be ill themselves, and then, once we are in the appointment, we put our trust in the doctor's hands and hope they can fix us. We trust they will properly diagnose us and make us well.

With one Canadian doctor, they seem to be getting it wrong at a fundamental level. The website www.ratemds.com lists Dr Jerry Tenenbaum with some truly terrible feedback. It shows a complete lack of focus on his patients, preferring to operate some sort of drive through mentality. Some patients even feel he is over prescribing medication rather than treating the root cause for their ailments.

The most common complaint about this doctor is that he has a terrible “bed side manner”. His lack of empathy, not to mention eye contact for his patients is clearly apparent, and they are not happy with this kind of service. Indeed, one patient said that he “barely makes eye contact and truly lacks any remorse for your condition “.

One of the problems doctors face when dealing with patients is ascertaining what levels of medication are appropriate. Indeed, this is why most doctors prefer not to prescribe antibiotics to patients unless it’s absolutely necessary. This is because bacteria can adapt to them over time, rendering them less effective. Pain killers suffer a similar problem. They become less effective over time and almost every prescription pain killer has negative (usually potentially addictive) side effects. Therefore, when a patient leaves a comment saying, “he seems to prefer prescribing pain killers over a thoughtful approach to treatment”, it’s a real worry for them and it should be a worry for you if you're considering using this doctors services.

Another patient of this doctor had a stranger issue with him, where he diagnosed the problem but then had the patient do the legwork required to obtain the test results needed for him to pursue the diagnosis. The doctor placed the onus firmly on the patient in finding the test results, something his staff should easily have been able to do. The patient really should only have had to turn up for the test. The review explained how she had to go back to her local GP, get referred for the test, then get a copy of the tests from her GP and pass them back to Dr, Tenenbaum. Without knowing the specifics of the patient, this could potentially be a horribly stressful thing to deal with. It's easy to imagine an older patient who becomes easily confused or forgetful having a terrible time with this.

Having read the reviews for this doctor and his practice of poor bedside manner, over prescription, and placing the onus on the patient to obtain test results, it's clear that this doctor has to make massive changes to how he operates his practice or risk forever ruining his reputation and ultimately his livelihood. Assuming he hasn't done this already.