Some Advice for the Doctor

I can't recall the last time I went to the doctor and he/she actually met with me beyond 5 minutes. Upon arrival the nurse records my latest vital statistics on a laptop. The doctor, or nurse practitioner enters holding another computer, says hello and never looks up from the coveted laptop, usually asking the same questions the nurse asked before she entered the symptoms or complaint on her computer. The doctor feverishly enters information like a beaver building a dam. These medical professionals spend so much time checking the right box, highlighting or clicking the correct entry that they never actually have to communicate face to face with patients except when they enter or leave the examination room.

Follow-up appointments become so frustrating because you are retelling the story, symptoms or pains from the previous appointment, which makes you wonder where is all the information they tenaciously entered on the laptop last time? Obviously it's not on the screen at the follow up appointment because if it was they wouldn't ask the same questions as the previous appointment, or they would know that this is is not a new condition, or you've never been on the medicine which was prescribed until last time, etc. It seems this is mainly a large practice phenomena and that makes sense. Sometimes big is not better and often far more impersonal. One physician actually asked my name and introduced her/himself to me as if I was a first-time patient. I had been seeing this doctor for three years! Obviously the fact that I was an established patient was not in the computer, or once again, she/he was not reading what was previously entered. Recently I had to call the doctor to let her/his nurse know that the prescribed medication (which they doubled at my previous visit) was not working. You gotta love this. Someone from the practice called and took me to task for "doubling" my medicine. Yes, the phone went very still when I said the doctor doubled the medication and that's exactly what I had stated in my previous message. In the race to enter all this information, someone isn't paying attention, or worse, they've got so many patients they don't really care!

Contrast this with a specialist I see who enjoys a very successful practice and is near the end of his medical career. He enters the room chart in hand, looks you in the eye, shakes your hand and asks what's wrong. He may ask about your family, work, or something else. As you talk he continues to look you in the eye and may, or may not make some notes on the chart. During the exam he talks to you. Upon completion of the exam he looks you in the eye, ask if there is anything else, and offers to explain anything he has just shared. Then he shakes your hand, or pats you on the back as you go to the checkout where the rest of the information comes out of a computer.

It would seem there are two schools of medicine. One attempts to focus on efficiency, the collection of data, and moving through patients like a thoroughbred at the Derby. The other focuses on the source, the actual patient. This is about more than personality. Obviously you can’t make a quiet, reserved person a stand-up comic, or extrovert and why would you? But is it too much to expect the one charged with our physical care to listen to us with an empathic ear? I've had car salesman who listen and communicate better. Technology seems to have unpersonalized patient-doctor (or in this day and age "customer-doctor") relations. Perhaps that's the real problem, it's big business. I'm learning that "non-profit" health care is very profitable.

Technology has made incredible leaps in our ability to communicate, but in some situations it seems to have actually retarded face to face communication. One need look no farther than the afternoon pick up line outside a middle school, or high school as students stand around each other all looking down as they text another student on their phone who might even been in the same crowd. Our march to impersonal communication is beginning to show up from corporate boardrooms to family, to doctors, banks and pick up carpool lines. One can only imagine where it will all end.

More often than not, upon leaving the doctor I observe, or overhear senior adults who are really not sure what was just discussed in the exam room and they seem very confused, or frustrated. Imagine how a senior adult must feel if I'm struggling in my ability to communicate with the doctor and I'm pretty tech saavy with relative few health issues. An old colleague in pastoral ministry put it well when he used to say, "We want our offices to be high tech, but high touch, and technology must never replace the touch." He was right.

Doctors interact with people every day. So do pastors. It's what we do. I'll bet the average minister could really help medical students learn a thing or two about listening and communicating so they are heard and actually hear, understand and appreciate what their patient, uh I mean customer is saying to them. I'm hoping my experience is an exception and not the norm. I have several friends who are doctors and others in the medical field. I can't recall any of them being out of touch with their patients. They are good listeners. Unfortunately, they are either retired, or they live outside my state!

People just want to be heard. There's a good lesson for the church. People come to us and they want to be heard. I sure hope we're better listeners!