Believe it or not, doctors are still human beings, and they like positive feedback they made a difference. The amount of gratitude that gets voiced by patients varies, depending on the medical specialty – and doctors in training would be wise to know how important is to them for patients to adore them.

If adoration is important, then you should go into surgery.

If it doesn’t matter, then pediatrics or psychiatry or ER work is OK.  

Still, all doctors want to hear a “thank you”. 

Psychiatry has something I suspect is unique. When some psychiatric symptoms clear up, the patient’s reaction is either indifference or discomfort.  You would think that if a patient was hearing voices, or believing their house invaded, or with intrusive thoughts about doing something dreadful in public, the removal of these matters would evoke relief, elation – and thanks. This seldom happens. A lifelong malady once eliminated seldom feels a relief; it feels odd and not quite comfortable.
”I guess I am no longer depressed but it feels really weird” is often voiced.  

Some other examples – “X” is an elderly man, dragged in by his wife as he has paranoia his wife is not really his wife. This is driving her bats. He gets started on some medication. In the follow up appointment, I notice X is talking about his physical matters, not the ‘this is not my wife’ complaint. I point this out. He states she is his wife. I point out last week he was thinking she was someone else. He acknowledges this but quickly goes back to talking about his aches.  There is no ‘What a relief to be rid of that awful symptom! Thanks, doc for helping me out’.  

Another example – “Y”, a woman with body image issues, thinks her nose is so big she can’t go out without a low hat; she is considering yet more surgery to remove the ‘elephant size’ nose. After treatment is started, she too starts talking about anything but her nose. ‘How do you feel about your nose these days?” (pause) “Oh it’s OK”. And quickly moves onto something else.  If I call her on it, she will acknowledge the discrepancy of last week’s beliefs to this week’s – but that is all. There is no relief: no ‘wow!’; and certainly no ‘Thank you!’.  

So shrinks have to get their satisfaction from the job done, rather than from gratitude.
 

I remember the patient I assisted through 5 years of ups and downs and crisis. He completed his appointments with the summary -

‘You never helped me at all’.