It has honestly surprised me how many times I have seen this one mixed up. I’m not sure if it’s because of just random typos, but it does seem to happen more than it should.

Patients are people; they generally reside in a hospital but can be found in other places.

Patience is something that an individual has with someone or something else.

Now, it seems to be confusing because patient and patient are the spelled the same even though they have different meanings.

EXAMPLES

The patients at the hospital were patient when waiting for their doctors (yeah, right).

Her mother exerted the most amount of patience she had ever seen when she described what had happened to cause her brother’s black eye.