Bethy, as a retired Nurse Practitioner I hear what you are saying. We would both have plenty of stories! In the last couple of years before I retired it was so painful to be told at inservices that after 50 years in nursing that my patients were now just customers.
And since now that is the mindset do people who are ill or have problems go to their clinician for help realize that they are regarded as a customer, not a patient?
I do realize it is just semantics, but in my mind it greatly reduces the patient to just a number in line at the deli.