Many people are not happy with the service they have gotten from their doctors.
Common complaints include:
When I first started practicing medicine, I (of course) had no patients. Every patient I saw was a new patient. Except for the rare patient who had never seen a doctor, most of them had been patients of other doctors before me. Of each person, I asked the following question: Why have you changed doctors?
Many were forced to change doctors for insurance reasons. For example, they changed employers and their doctor was not on the new insurance plan, or their doctor had stopped taking their insurance. But most of the patients were deeply dissatisfied with their previous doctors, for one reason or another.
Because I am the kind of person who wants to be liked, I made it a personal quest to become the kind of doctor people don't complain about to their next doctor! To do so, I endeavored to understand what people didn't like about their doctors.
It's a well known phenomenon in medicine that patients complain about their doctors. A large percentage of these complaints are inevitable. A grieving patient will often blame the doctor for his loss. A patient who doesn't like himself may project his self-loathing onto his doctor. Good advice from the doctor may be rejected by the patient in an angry display. Any experienced doctor is accustomed to such ill will on the part of a few patients each month.
In my opinion, however, the vast majority of patient dissatisfaction with doctors is well deserved. Many doctors will disagree with me, and I am expecting this book to be met with some criticism from colleagues. But I'm not writing this book for doctors; I'm writing it for patients.
Patients are at a disadvantage when they go to see the doctor. The doctor knows all about illnesses, and so is at a big advantage in the relationship. The patient, on the other hand, is being confronted with a malfunction of his own body.
Any bodily malfunction, however small, is terrifying.
If the doctor is having a bad day and says something thoughtless or rude, the patient can be devastated. The patient thinks, Here is the person I've come to with my very scary problem, the person who knows how to help me--and he steps on my feelings.
Or the doctor may be quite pleasant, but not do anything to help the patient with the problem. This happens a lot. Because the patient thinks the doctor knows what he's doing, the patient usually will not seek out a second opinion. Rather, the patient will just suffer with the problem.
Because of the huge advantage the doctor has vis-a-vis the patient, it is incumbent on physicians to do anything they can to give patients power in the relationship. The physician should listen to the patient, and explain everything fully. These explanations must be not just complete, but completely satisfying to the patient.
When a patient tells me that a consultant did not explain something, and I speak with the consultant about it on the phone, the consultant always tells me that he did in fact explain the point to the patient. But communication is not just saying what you want to communicate. It's also making sure that the person you're talking to understands what you've said.
My purpose in writing this book is to empower patients to get what they want from their doctors. You will read in these pages how to get your doctor to communicate with you, how to make sure your doctor is doing everything appropriate for your medical conditions, even how to get your prescriptions refilled. I hope that, as a result of reading this book, you are able to take the reigns in your own health care, feel satisfied with your interactions with your doctor, and have a long and healthy life.
