Thanks for sharing

Reader's Digest invites two dozens doctor to tell us what they really think of patients.

Not much, apparently. They get irritated by cell phone calls during office visits, by sexism that assumes female doctors are there to fetch coffee, by trivial ills brought to the ER.

Fair enough. But look at the ways some of these practitioners -- mostly anonymous -- cope:

"I was told in school to put a patient in a gown when he isn't listening or cooperating," a chiropractor from Atlanta says. "It casts him in a position of subservience."

Then this:

"I used to have my secretary page me after I had spent five minutes in the room with a difficult or overly chatty patient," says an oncologist from Santa Cruz, Calif. "Then I'd run out, saying, 'Oh, I have an emergency.' "

Here's another revelation:

"In most branches of medicine, we deal more commonly with old people. So we become much more enthusiastic when a young person comes along," says a family physician from Washington, D.C. "We have more in common with and are more attracted to him or her. Doctors have a limited amount of time, so the younger and more attractive you are, the more likely you are to get more of our time."

Points for honesty, at least.

Care to share some secret opinions?