By Lisa A. Eramo
"Hello, my name is Dr. [insert last name], your OB/GYN."
[Doctor turns her back]
"Nice to meet you, doctor."
"What brings you here today?"
[Doctor shuffles papers, her gaze focused on the medical record in her hand]
"I'm here for my routine exam and to talk about my joint pain."
"Let me take a look."
[Doctor performs physical exam then heads over to the sink to wash her hands, her back now turned away from the patient]
"Ah yes, you are definitely a candidate for the stomach surgery."
"Um, do you mean gastric bypass? We weren't even talking about that."
"Yes, the gastric bypass."
"But what about my joint pain? Why do I have joint pain?"
[Doctor shares some irrelevant statistics based on studies conducted with nuns]
"What does gastric bypass have to do with joint pain?"
[Doctor shares a personal story about how her diabetic aunt weighs her food and counts her calories obsessively every day]
"I still don't understand why you're dismissing my symptoms. Gastric bypass seems a bit...um...drastic?"
Silence.
Okay, so who isn't a few pounds overweight? It sickens me (pun intended) to think that the above conversation is based on an actual interaction with a physician. How can someone possibly be so inconsiderate (and deaf)? The truth is, if you walk into just about any physician's office in America, the land of HMOs, not only are you likely to wait an average of 15-20 minutes (or more) to even see the doctor, but then once you are face-to-face with the self-proclaimed miracle worker, you're lucky if you get five minutes of his or her attention--only to be unheard, insulted, discouraged, or made to feel less worthy in the end.
Do you ever get the feeling that your physician is from another planet? It's almost as if the doctor follows an 'insert earplugs' command right before entering the room so everything you say goes unheard. But wait, isn't it part of their job to listen and document medical information? Last time I checked, an office visit typically followed this script: Doctor asks question, patient answers question, perhaps doctor makes a notation in the record regarding the discourse. Seems pretty elementary if you ask me.
But let's get real here, folks. At some point in his or her life, today's overcaffinated, pessimistic, worn out physician was on the flip side of the coin--that is, he or she was the patient. What does this mean? It means that instead of wearing a pressed white lab coat and fancy ID badge around the neck, the physician (then patient) was wearing a paper-thing "napkin"...and not much else.
And boy, was it cold in that exam room. Can someone please turn up the heat?
One could argue that because doctors were patients at one point in their lives, they would be more empathic to the patient's plight. Could it be true? As a general rule of thumb, nope.
Our country's medical schools give birth to countless physicians each year who are resilient enough to persevere through some of the toughest academic and residency programs. According to the American Medical Association, there were more than 334,000physicians practicing in the United States. In 2000, there were more than 800,000.
And although these individuals have surely proven their ability to study, pass exams, and perhaps even save lives, there is one element that they lack: compassion. It's as though as soon as they added "MD" after their names, they had a license to strip others of dignity. After all, patients don't really have feelings, do they? They're really just one more subscriber ID on the Blue Cross (or whatever other overpriced health plan to which you throw away money) bandwagon. Patients equal dollars. Yeah right.
So what would it take to make the average patient happy? A little kindness goes a long way. And last time I checked, smiles were free. News flash: a handshake only takes two seconds of a physician's oh-so-precious time.
Patients trust physicians with their deepest, darkest secrets. Patients let physicians exam their naked bodies and stick tubes down their throats. Patients let physicians cut them open during surgery, not knowing whether they've had more than an hour of sleep the night before. And yet despite these intimate acts, many physicians won't even make eye contact with a patient, yet alone show some compassion when giving "bad news" or suggesting difficult lifestyle changes.
For now, I'll just bide my time, knowing that eventually, physician payment will be directly linked to quality performance, patient outcomes, and patient satisfaction. And maybe Medicare will eventually slash the physician fee schedule so docs can lose their "I am God" complex.
In the meantime, every time a doc upsets me, I'll go to wwww.healthgrades.com and share my thoughts. If I could save one fellow patient the aggravation of seeing a pompous and rude physician, then my visit would not have been in vain.
And for the doc with the earplugs and diabetic aunt who insists that "stomach surgery" is the cure for joint pain? Here's my prescription for you: Take two kindness pills, and don't call me in the morning.
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