I have this really bad problem I have to work very hard to get over when I am at a doctor- I have this need for the doctor to be pleased with me and not disappointed in what I have to say, so I find myself telling the doctor what I think they want to hear before correcting myself and saying the truth. It’s like I think the doctor will hate me if I have the wrong symptoms. I don’t know why.
Really common. Hard for many of us to not do this. It’s the same when you’re in technical support; people lie about the circumstances because they don’t want to look bad in front of the techie. Or doctor. Or dentist. Or mechanic.
There really is no justification for it. It’s part of the American healthcare experience. It makes them money to have no downtime between patients. It costs them nothing to make you wait. They book patient appointments with this philosophy in mind and it’s incredibly disrespectful.
The flipside of this is that they have no downtime between patients because demand is through the roof and there aren’t enough doctors. Predicting how long each visit will take is fraught, plus emergent stuff may come up that throws off the already tight schedule. Better to have a long time in the waiting room than wait weeks/months longer to get an appointment at all
In my clinic the patients are asking if the doctor is 11 minutes late, i ask them if they’ve ever read their letters that state prepare to be here at least 2-3 hours in case of delay. Every patient takes a various amount of time y’all.
Every patient takes a various amount of time y’all.
idk, from the patient’s perspective my experience has been that I get three minutes of doctor time regardless of what my complaint is or even whether the doctor knows what I’m there for. “I’m feeling kinda low lately.” “Here’s an rx for an effexor. I’ll not be explaining what it is, what it does, or any side effects to look out for. If you have any issues, such as a days long hypomanic episode that leads to you sobbing and obsessively vacuuming the floors, here’s the number of someone who cares. NEXT!”
Not my patients, they have complex problems and need a lot of time. Maintaining someone on a real medical keto diet or starting chemotherapy for MS or refilling pain pumps for paraplegics is not a quick task.
Conversely, you really don’t want to be getting seen promptly at a hospital. Ideally you want to be in the middle third of the priority order; get seen reasonably quickly, but not “holy shit you are going to die if we don’t deal with you now” quickly
I know you really wanted to say this point but it’s mostly unrelated to the original post. The post refers to an exam room, you’re talking about waiting rooms.
Yeah, I had one time where the doctor was 2 hours late. I had taken time off work for the appointment, too, but had I known he was running that late, I could have worked my normal schedule and still be there in plenty of time. Frustrating as hell, and he sincerely apologized for it.
But you never know what happened earlier in the day that caused that.
Someday, I might be the patient that needs that extra time.
Yeah they should, but they rarely have the time to do that
All the beds occupied means shit is going down in an all hands way and that means updating people on the time table they’re being admitted within is a very low priority
Couple of years ago, I went to an orthopedic clinic with a torn ligament. They tell me to lay down in one of the rooms. An hour passes. Suddenly, the lights in the room and adjacent hallway turn off. They dead-ass forgot me in there and were about to call it a day when I popped my head out.
An hour? But, I’m easily entertained by my devices and probably wouldn’t notice the time going by. It also heavily depends on what else I have going on; I always pad my schedule for doctors, but even so, there might be something else I have to get to.
It’s medical. The person before me may have needed more time. I think doctors have a harder time than most estimating how much time a patient will need, and I don’t want them rushing me out the door.
For my own appointments, I’m generally on the same page. I have a harder time being as patient when I’m taking one of my kids to the doctor, which is a much more frequent occurrence. I’ve been kept waiting for exorbitant lengths of time at a variety of pediatric clinics, which is unpleasant when your kids object to being confined in a small, boring room for an indefinable amount of time. Sometimes it’s been so egregious that I’ve had to switch to another provider.
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