Hair appt vs Doctor appt
I went to the salon yesterday. I only go once every 3-4 years so it stresses me out a little bit but it was so nice. When you book the appointment you can say whether it is just a trim or a completely new haircut and that allows them to set aside the time that's appropriate for the service. I didn't feel rushed at all. She’d style it and then ask what I thought and we’d take off a little more here or a little more there.
And I was thinking - what if the system was set in such a way that she only had 20 minutes per appointment. And at that 20 minute mark, whatever was done was done and she had to move on to the next person. Or she could take a little bit longer but then get people waiting and then be late for the next appointment. I think what would eventually happen with that is people would say, “Okay obviously that's not enough time to do a good haircut and to do a good job at it, so let's change that. Let's give more time. Let's set aside more time.”
But with doctors… it's just. It’s crazy to me to think that doctors are expected to figure out why you've been having fainting spells or why you've been having stomach issues for years in like a 10 minute appointment. And when we can't figure that out, then the problem is us. “Oh, my doctor doesn’t care about me. My doctor never listens.” When really the system is working against us.
If I give one patient more time, then the next patient has to wait. And then we get complaints that we're always behind schedule and we don't run on time. And instead of saying, “Okay, the system doesn't work,” frequently it's I'm not good at my job.
When we go to our scheduling team or our admin and we say, “Hey, I need more time with patients.” What I get told regularly is no. No, it's a me problem. I need to work on my comfort with the electronic health record system. I need to work on making sure that I can direct my patient in the one path to the one problem. And then if they have more, make sure that I reschedule them. But frequently, the people telling me this have never had to sit with patients. When I am with a patient and they start telling me that they've been feeling miserable for years or they're having a really rough time because of a family member passing away or something like that. There’s no way that I can say, “Ok, one problem. Sorry, we can’t talk about that at all. Let’s move onto the next thing. Sorry, we can’t talk about that.” That’s not how you build relationships. That’s not how you get people to trust you so that you can actually delve down into the problem. I don't get the luxury of having the time necessary to do the job and because of that it makes sense to me that a lot of patients think their doctors don't care. And that's really really sad.
