A patient having his blood pressure taken by a doctor.

A patient is any person who receives medical attention, care, or treatment. The person is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician or other medical professional. Health consumer, health care consumer or client are other names for patient, usually used by governmental agencies, insurance companies, and/or patient groups (who may object to some implications of the word 'patient'). Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... This article needs more context around or a better explanation of technical details to make it more accessible to general readers and technical readers outside the specialty, without removing technical details. ... Injury is damage or harm caused to the structure or function of the body caused by an outside agent or force, which may be physical or chemical. ... The Doctor by Luke Fildes This article is about the term physician, one type of doctor; for other uses of the word doctor see Doctor. ...

Etymology

The word patient is derived from the Latin word patiens, the present participle of the deponent verb pati, meaning "one who endures" or "one who suffers". Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... A deponent verb is a verb that is active in meaning but takes its form from a different voice, most commonly the middle or passive. ...

Patient is also the adjective form of patience. Both senses of the word share a common origin. talea harris and sophie king are sluts In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject, giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... Patience, engraving by Hans Sebald Beham, 1540 Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Patience Patience is the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties. ...

In itself the definition of patient doesn't imply suffering or passivity but the role it describes is often associated with the definitions of the adjective form: enduring trying circumstances with even temper. Some have argued recently that the term should be dropped, because it underlines the inferior status of recipients of health care. ^[1]

Pediatric polysomnography patient at the
Children's Hospital in Saint Louis, USA.

For them, "the active patient is a contradiction in terms, and it is the assumption underlying the passivity that is the most dangerous". Unfortunately none of the alternative terms seem to offer a better definition. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1024x683, 676 KB) Summary A pediatrics patient prepared for a polysomnogram by a respiratory therapist, Childrens Hospital (Saint Louis), Saint Louis, Missouri, 2006. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1024x683, 676 KB) Summary A pediatrics patient prepared for a polysomnogram by a respiratory therapist, Childrens Hospital (Saint Louis), Saint Louis, Missouri, 2006. ... Clinical Examination Pediatrics (also spelled paediatrics) is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents (from newborn to age 16-21, depending on the country). ... Polysomnographic record of REM Sleep . ... St. ...

• Client, whose Latin root cliens means "one who is obliged to make supplications to a powerful figure for material assistance", carries a sense of subservience.
• Consumer suggest both a financial relationship and a particular social/political stance, implying that health care services operate exactly like all other commercial markets. Many reject that term on the grounds that consumerism is an individualistic concept that fails to capture the particularity of health care systems.

Outpatient vs inpatient

An outpatient is a patient who only comes to a hospital or doctor for diagnosis and/or therapy and then leaves again. For the record label, see Hospital Records. ...

An inpatient on the other hand is 'admitted' to the hospital and stays overnight or for an indeterminate time, usually several days or weeks (though some cases, like coma patients, have stayed in hospitals for decades). Hospitals are usually distinguished from other types of medical facilities by their ability to admit and care for inpatients.

See also

• Casualty
• Doctor-patient relationship
• e-Patient
• Hospital
• Medicine
• Patient advocacy
• Patient empowerment
• Patients' Bill of Rights (US)
• Virtual patient

A casualty is a person who is the victim of an accident, injury, or trauma. ... The patient-doctor relationship is considered to be essential in modern medicine and forms one of the foundations of contemporary medical ethics. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... For the record label, see Hospital Records. ... medicines, see medication and pharmacology. ... Patient advocacy refers to speaking on behalf of a patient in order to protect their rights and help them obtain needed information and services. ... The patient empowerment concept, a recent outgrowth of the natural health movement, asserts that to be truly healthy, people must bring about changes in their social situations and in the environment that influences their lives, not only in their personal behavior. ... President Bush meets with House leaders to discuss Patients Bill of Rights legislation The Patients Bill of Rights Consumer Bill of Rights and Responsibilities The following was adopted by the US Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry in 1998. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...

References

1. ^ Neuberger, J. (1999). "Let's do away with "patients"". British Medical Journal 318: 1756-8. 

External links

• I am a good patient, believe it or not, a peer-reviewed article published in the British Medical Journal's (BMJ) first issue dedicated to patients in its 160 year history
• How (not) to be a good patient, review article with views on the meaning of the words 'good doctor' vs. 'good patient'