Some interesting reading and musing for us as we head into the New Year's weekend... a post from Dominic Carone, PhD (on KevinMD's website) called 10 Ways doctors can lose their patients.
The theme is that there are certain things doctors do - or don't do - that drive us patients away. Dr. Carone attempts to list what those things might be as a warning to doctors - if doctors do these things, their patients will leave their practices.
To us patients, there is nothing eye opening in Dr. Carone's list. I'm not sure I agree wholeheartedly with everything he has said, but it's a very fair attempt. They range from poor bedside manner (duh!) to not listening. And from having a dreary (and I would add dirty) office to cancelling too many appointments. The only one I truly disagree with is whether patients should help make decisions ("don't send your patient home with a list of three medications and tell him to research them on the internet.") To that I would say - ask the patient how involved he or she wants to be in the determination of the right medication.
So the list is the list. But the drama is in the comments. Some comments come from doctors who have added a few other reasons patients leave. Some come from patients who elaborate on the very item that drove them from a doctor's practice....
But the real eye opener is the doctor who explains how she uses those list items to intentionally drop the patients she wants to send away! To quote from "rachel44"
It's easy to lose them....just very politely and professionally don't do what they want and/or don't give them what they want. Then they will bless your life by dramatically firing you.
If that riles you, then I'll ask you to give it some extra thought. What rachel44 has referred to are people who WE would want to send away if we were wearing those doctors' shoes. Not that we are diagnosed with something like fibromyalgia (which she mentions). Rather, because we make ourselves difficult to deal with whatever the issue is.
Yes - doctors complain about patients, too - and in some cases, they have a right to. The key for us patients is making sure we don't cross that line between being empowered (which means we continue to be respectful while focusing on what we need and want) to being a pain in the backside. When we cross that line, the last people we are helping are ourselves.
Here are some of the common complaints doctors have about patients (and why they might just behave like rachel44.)
The extreme is to be dismissed - even blackballed by your doctor.
Here's where you can share your story about being dismissed by a doctor.
If you wish you could return to see a doctor who has dismissed you, here's some advice for repairing the relationship with your doctor.
Don't be "that" patient. But don't accept mediocrity from a doctor either. It's the balance that will help us find our best outcomes.
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Agree? Disagree?
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I understand what you are trying to say with regard to rachel44’s comment: that patients can be so difficult that doctors may intentionally treat them badly in order to “lose” them. Unfortunately, I think that in your effort to support your point, you have used a poor source and done a disservice to both fibromyalgia sufferers and to patients attempting to obtain good treatment.
rachel44 says she “not infrequently” drops patients for having diseases like fibromyalgia and for being difficult. The “frequency” comment suggests to me that she has an unprofessional expectation about what a patient “should” be. That would make her a DOCTOR who is difficult to deal with and who has the dreaded disease called “arrogance and dismissiveness”.
In regard to rachel44, there is no way to “professionally” refuse to give someone what they want if what they want is medical care. I know that you can (and should) refuse to provide certain medications if you don’t believe that they are indicated, but that’s not the message I get from her comment. If you have a physician that is not providing you with test results, repeatedly keeps you waiting without explanation, cancelling appointments, or being dismissive, they are not behaving professionally.
On a snarky note, the spelling and grammar errors in her post raise sufficient concerns about her attention to detail that her “lost” patients may be blessed ones.