The vast majority of people will need the services of a doctor at least once in their life. From birth, to colds, flu, broken bones, scrapes, bruises, lacerations, cancers, and even age-related ailments, no one gets out of life completely unscathed. And often we need a professional to help us.
Now, doctors are supposed to aid the injured, the sick, and even the dying. That sacred duty is expected to come with a modicum of compassion, sympathy, and tenderness.
Of course, that doesn't always happen. There is the Doctor Jerk, often either a Knight in Sour Armor who is sick of treating people who could have prevented the ailments befalling them just by simple clean living, or, worse, they got into medicine strictly for the money.
Of course, since no human is all good or all bad, some can split the difference between a humble healer and malicious medical malpractice. These are the doctors who have Seen It All, still desire to help, but also have developed a sort of Gallows Humor to shield them from the less pleasant aspects of their work. Unfortunately, they seem to think their brand of wit and witticisms is best dispensed to their patients, who may not find the Black Comedy to be as calming and relaxing as they would like. Sometimes the humor is based on False Reassurance.
Some patients might find the jibe to be Actually Pretty Funny. Others may be less amused. Compare to the Florence Nightingale Effect for cases where medical personnel flirt with their patients or vice versa. May result from the patient being Acquainted with Emergency Services.
For the purposes of this trope, anyone tasked with giving medical advice or information can count, from a Witch Doctor, School Nurse, and those in the dental profession.
While this is Truth in Television, the line between what is light-hearted teasing and mean-spirited cruelty can be vary greatly from person to person. Also, most real-life accounts would be unverifiable anecdotes. As such, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Doki Doki School Hours: Linda Matsumoto is the School Nurse, and she delights in being snarky to her patients, from Kobayashi's Weight Woe and A-Cup Angst ("Give up and accept the truth," said with a smirk) to Mika-sensei, who's her best friend, about her short stature.
Comic Strips
- Calvin and Hobbes: When visiting a pediatrician, Calvin repeatedly asks the doctor if various things will hurt, with ever-growing panic, as depicted by the larger and darker lettering in Calvin's word balloons. By the third question, the doctor decides to stop comforting Calvin and have a bit of sport:
Calvin: WHAT'S THAT? WILL IT HURT?
Doctor: [holding an otoscope] It's a cattle prod. It hurts a little bit less than a branding iron.
[Calvin faints]
Doctor: Little kids have no sense of humor.
Fan Works
- Everyday Craziness in Pontypandy: Dr. Moumin, while one of the kindest characters, also has a rather sly sense of humour, and is not above cracking jokes or sarcastic remarks with her patients.
Films — Live-Action
- Carry On Again Doctor: When Dr. Carver meets Long Hampton Hospital's newest kidney case, Mr. Bean, the first thing he does is make a kidney bean joke.
Literature
- Adrian Mole:
- In Secret Diary and Growing Pains, the teenage Adrian is frequently teased by Dr Gray, who sneers at Adrian's complaints of swollen nipples, his voice suddenly fluctuating between high and low pitch, and blisters.
- An Australian dentist also sneers at Adrian, telling him that he has often seen Adrian walking home eating a Mars bar, so it will be entirely his fault if he is toothless by age thirty.
- Chrysalis (RinoZ): The Death Seeker "Immortals" are a nuisance to the healer ants, increasing an already heavy workload with the injuries they take in their misguided attempts to achieve a Heroic Sacrifice. The healers get their revenge by taunting the Immortals with their own survival while healing them, loudly remarking on how lucky they were that a blow didn't strike an inch further left, or commenting that they were just a few seconds away from dying when they were pulled back.
Live-Action TV
- Blackadder: In "Bells" from the second series, Blackadder sees Dr Leech, because he is in love with his manservant, and is worried that he is turning homosexual. Dr Leech cheerfully berates him, and this is even lampshaded by Blackadder.
Dr Leech: You've just discovered that you've no more right to live on God's Earth than a weasel. Still, why should I complain? More rampant totty for us real men, eh?Blackadder: Am I paying for this personal abuse, or is it extra?Dr Leech: All part of the service.
- Fraggle Rock: In "Playing Till It Hurts", Red, just before a big rock hockey game, injures her leg. When she tries to go to practice anyway, Boober, who's acting as her doctor, talks down to her while making her get back into bed.
Boober: [grabbing Red] Oh no, you don't! [shoves her into her hammock] You just climb right back into ol' Mr. Beddy-Bye.
Red: [shaking her fist at him] Right after I introduce you to Mr. Fisty-Wist! - In the otherwise fairly serious two-parter episode of The Golden Girls "Sick and Tired", Dorothy goes to see her pediatrician friend (as multiple doctors have claimed there's nothing wrong with her) and asks him if she's going to die.
Dr. Weston: [bluntly] I'm afraid so.
Dorothy: You really think so?
Dr. Weston: [shrugs] Sooner or later I guarantee it! Unless the Japanese come up with something! - M*A*S*H:
- Maj. Winchester can be a Doctor Jerk when he wants to be, but is usually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. He is less sympathetic to soldiers who injure themselves with stupidity than those who are wounded in combat, as demonstrated in "Trick or Treatment" when he has to treat a Marine who has managed to lodge a pool ball in his mouth. Winchester pretends not to notice the problem at first, suggesting that he can get the patient's temperature anally instead of orally, since the usual way is blocked. Then he suggests that he can remove all of the patient's teeth to get the pool ball out, which the patient vehemently protests. Winchester finally states he can give the patient a muscle relaxer to loosen the grip on the ball...
Winchester: But that's the wimp's way out!
- In "Point of View", a patient in the bed beside the POV patient explains how he's not really all that hurt, but he's going to play it up for sympathy until he's released. He puts on a show of being in excruciating pain for Dr. Winchester. Winchester calmly explains to him the truly minimal level of his injury in clinical terms, then adds:
Winchester: By the way, that was the worst performance I've ever seen in here. It lacked depth and sincerity! You're lucky I stayed for the whole show.
- In another episode, a patient comes in who is an old friend of Col. Potter's. The patient has taken an injury to the rump, and is complaining about the pain. Potter tells his old friend to relax, as the surgeons under his command specialize in "brain surgery".
- Maj. Winchester can be a Doctor Jerk when he wants to be, but is usually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. He is less sympathetic to soldiers who injure themselves with stupidity than those who are wounded in combat, as demonstrated in "Trick or Treatment" when he has to treat a Marine who has managed to lodge a pool ball in his mouth. Winchester pretends not to notice the problem at first, suggesting that he can get the patient's temperature anally instead of orally, since the usual way is blocked. Then he suggests that he can remove all of the patient's teeth to get the pool ball out, which the patient vehemently protests. Winchester finally states he can give the patient a muscle relaxer to loosen the grip on the ball...
- Night Court:
- "Dan's Operation" sees Dan in the hospital for an operation. Being Dan, he hits on all of the nurses, which irritates his physician Dr. Flick and leads to some jokes:
- Dr. Flick, to retaliate for Dan's behavior, tells him he's putting him down for an enema. Dan protests that he's not paying for one:
Dr. Flick: My treat.
- Dan is also visited by an older nurse, who delights in telling him that she will be giving him a sponge bath later, adding that she has an "itty-bitty little sponge", and that she will be using it to clean every part of him.
- He is also visited, frequently, by an orderly who keeps trying to fit Dan for a toe tag. At one point Dan makes the mistake of telling the man he will submit "over my dead body!"
Orderly: It's a date!
- Dr. Flick, to retaliate for Dan's behavior, tells him he's putting him down for an enema. Dan protests that he's not paying for one:
- Inverted in one episode: Harry has a bout of nausea, and the show cuts to Harry with a doctor examining him in his office. The physician, who had been dining in the same restaurant when Harry first got sick, tells Harry he should see a doctor, and when given puzzled looks by the staff he explains that he's a gynecologist, which leads to multiple jokes about being out of his strike zone. And when the doctor asks how frequent Harry's pain is, Dan quips he'll want to know when they're five minutes apart.
Doctor: You really should be seen by a specialist. I mean, it's been years since...Selma: You've been with a man?
- "Dan's Operation" sees Dan in the hospital for an operation. Being Dan, he hits on all of the nurses, which irritates his physician Dr. Flick and leads to some jokes:
- RFDS (2021): Happens frequently, with the implicit justification that RFDS Broken Hill's jurisdiction is a very small community so the doctors and flight nurses often know their patients personally and are teasing their friends (Pete in particular seems to know nearly everyone). Sometimes the patients start it themselves, as in the season 2 premiere when an older gentleman named Prawnie walks up to the aid tent at a rodeo with a throwing dart in his eye.
Prawnie: Go on, you can start with the bulls-eye gags.Wayne: Thank God for that, it's all I could think about.[and a bit later, after Wayne orders some drugs for him]Matty: You want that in an IV or thrown at you from ten feet, Prawnie? [makes to throw the needle]
Stand-Up Comedy
- Bill Engvall relates when he had to take his son, Travis, for a sports physical. Come the inevitable moment of "Turn your head and cough", when the doctor has young Travis Engvall by his balls, he tells him he's just making sure there's four.
Travis: [worriedly] DAD?!Bill: He meant two! It's just a joke. [mirthlessly] Ha-ha ha-ha.
- Jeff Foxworthy talks about the time he got a kidney stone. It was, according to his doctor, whom Jeff describes as thinking he's a comedian, a good-news/bad-news situation. The good news? It wasn't a kidney stone. The bad news was that it was five kidney stones.
Toys
- Transformers:
- Hoist is described as the Autobot equivalent of a family physician, the one the Autobots go to see for routine health checkups and maintenance. He is a jovial, friendly sort, and while he's naturally an up-beat kind of guy he also wants to provide a safe space that gives his patients a sense of normalcy. Even the more rough-and-tumble Autobots go along with him, because his motto "You have to be rolling before you can be fighting" reminds them that if they don't look after themselves, how can they fight at their best?
- Ratchet is the most famous medical-associated Transformer of all, and as the Autobot Chief Medical Officer he's the chief surgeon to Hoist's family physician. His original and expanded bios note that Ratchet is known for his irreverent bedside manner, that he loves having a good time and has a dry wit. Even the likes of Optimus Prime will get an earful should the Autobot leader fail to properly look after himself. Oddly, this aspect of his personality has rarely actually been seen in nearly all Transformers media, as many versions of him like in Transformers: Animated and Transformers: Prime are grumpy old men.
Visual Novels
- Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-: Dr. Arach, the Tohno family doctor, enjoys getting a rise out of the two Tohno siblings under her care. Her treatment of Shiki displays she's fully aware her patient is perverted by, among other things, telling him he should strip down to show off the goods. The one time the player sees Arach doing her medical job outside the Tohno mansion, specifically administering vaccines at Shiki's school, shows she still has the same playful attitude but ups the ante with Shiki specifically by offering him the choice between an ineffective vaccine that hurts a lot, and one that doesn't hurt much and is more effective. Picking the painful vaccine will lead to a Bad End since it's recycled from one of Arach's other professions besides the field of medicine.
Western Animation
- Animaniacs: When dealing with Rasputin, the Warner Brothers (and their sister Dot) take up the role of dentists. Wakko and Dot try to reassure Rasputin that Yakko is the kindest, most gentle dentist in the world.
Yakko: It's the drill that hurts.
- Family Guy: In "The Fat Guy Strangler", Peter goes for his physical with Dr. Hartman, who performs an endless array of Bait-and-Switch gags: for example, he asks about Peter's "cancer," then remarks that he's talking about his astrological sign, and worries that the test results in Peter's file are bad, then reveals that he's talking about his son's history test. Lois eventually begs him to stop the shtick and give an honest assessment of Peter's health; Hartman bluntly replies that Peter's fine, just incredibly fat.
- The Simpsons:
- One episode has a news brief about a nurse with this attitude who laughs "all the way to the blood bank". The featured snippet has her asking by a show of hands how many of her admitted patients were there to have shoulder surgery. After they all painfully raise their hands, she laughs and says "Gotcha!"
- In "Homer's Triple Bypass," after Homer recovers from a heart attack in the hospital, Dr. Hibbert says that Homer is as "weak as a kitten" and pokes him and pinches his cheeks, despite the fact that it makes Homer uncomfortable.
- South Park:
- "Succubus" shows that Cartman has a feud with his optometrist because the latter enjoys teasing him about his weight, such as calling him "Little Piggy."
- "Cancelled": The proctologist does this to Cartman.
Proctologist: Oh my God! ... Why, there's a huge crack going right down the middle!
I'd like to tease you medically, troper, but as I'm not your physician of record, I can't tickle your funny bone, as that would violate AMA regulations.