Doctor Curmudgeon® You Can’t Win… Do Not Even Try!
[AdSense-A]
By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP
For Doctor Curmudgeon®, it began many years ago, in a different time, in a different place.
She was a sort of innocent fourth year student surviving and staying awake during a surgery rotation. A woman had a breast lump and in those bygone years, it was being removed and a frozen section done. The small cranky student found out that it was deemed benign and she stayed at the patient’s bedside, wanting to be sure that as soon as the woman opened her eyes, the doctorlet could say, “it is benign.” Well, the woman awoke and Doctor Curmudgeon happily gave her pronouncement.
The patient stared at the doctor and said, “You little bitch! You mean I went through this for nothing?”
The young curmudgeon stopped purring, and walked away with great dignity.
And as the years passed, and she practiced medicine, she encountered the man who was very concerned about a scan. The results did not thump down on her desk until a few minutes before 5 PM on a Friday. Aware of her patient’s concern, she could hardly wait to call him and tell him that the results were normal.
His response? “Why on earth are you bothering me now? It’s Friday night and I’m about to go out for dinner. You could have waited until Monday.”
Just a couple of weeks ago, Doctor Curmudgeon® returned a patient’s call. This woman had called earlier when the curmudgeon was with a patient and she wanted to discuss her blood test results. This was fine with the curmudgeon but she could not call the woman back until after 5 PM.
The conversation:
Doctor: “Hello, this is Doctor Curmudgeon®. I have your results.
Woman: “Well, you can just call me back in one hour. I am having dinner.”
Doctor: “Madam, in one hour I will be having dinner.”
Next sound is that of the cranky doctor slamming down the phone.
There are many previous rants about patients refusing to return calls and when the patient finally comes in or the doctor is able to reach him/her, the all too frequent response is, “I was just too busy to call back.”
And far too many people stop their:
Diabetes medications.
Anti hypertensives
Lipid lowering agents….
Because they are “finished,” and the
blood sugar
blood pressure
cholesterol…
was Ok on last check, so they do not need the medicines any more.
Make changes in lifestyle? Change your diet? Pay attention to the discussions we have about what you are eating and ways to increase your physical activity?
Pshaw!
You can’t win!
But you have to keep trying…because every now and then, somebody actually listens…and it makes the old Doctor’s day!
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”
[si-contact-form form=’2′]