Little Known Facts About Your Doctors
*I’m gonna make this into a poster and frame it in my waiting room. These concepts are completely foreign to my patients, who still live in an old timey world where their doctors are superhuman and live to serve their every whim.
They require food. Lunch breaks happen more days than not, as do supper breaks. Your calls will not be answered during this time.
They sometimes have to pee or–*gasp*–poop. Inevitably you will call during one of these short breaks and we will not be available.
They enjoy living in houses and wearing clothes. These things cost money.
They require paychecks on a regular basis in order to pay for the things that cost money. In order to acquire these paychecks, they must charge for the work that they do, and you or your insurance company or the government must pay for services rendered.
They cannot be everywhere at the same time. They understand that you prefer to have a doctor who knows your history evaluate you every time, but if they are seeing patients in the office they cannot see you in the ER or the hospital simultaneously.
They have other patients besides you. When they are not available to see you, it is likely because they are helping another patient who is just as important as you are. When they don’t call you right back on a week day, it’s probably because they’re seeing these other people who are also patients.
They are limited by human definitions of time. If they see patients 8 hours a day, there will occasionally be days when their appointment blocks are completely full to overflowing, and they will be physically unable to see any more patients in the allotted time.
They require rest and time off. Though you would like for your doctor to be available 24/7 they, like iPhones, must shut down once in a while. They cannot work 24 hours a day. There will be times that they will be completely unavailable to you.
They like privacy, especially during their “shut it down time”. They really don’t want you asking them about your rash or poo problems over Facebook. They don’t want to look at your mole in the freezer section at the grocery store. And they DEFINITELY don’t want you showing up at their front door unannounced at 6AM unless you are actively dying.
They require sleep, preferably in one continuous chunk. Uninterrupted by a half dozen phone calls.
They work a LOT. While you think your doctor is being lazy ignoring your phone calls, they’re actually seeing patients or completing charts. When you think they’re late to work because they slept in, it’s actually because they rounded at the nursing home at 6am. When you are at home watching The Voice, they are at home or in their office finishing charts.
They have families. Some are married. Some have kids. Some don’t have spouses or kids but really really want them. They need time to go out and find them. They need time to be with their families. Leave them alone to be with their families!
They take vacations. Your whole entire universe will not collapse if they take a week day off. There are other doctors. There are emergency rooms. Nobody gets sick on Superbowl Sunday, but if a doctor is off on a random Tuesday everybody literally falls apart.
They get sick. And they don’t go to other doctors for useless antibiotics for their sniffles.
Congratulations, you now know that doctors are, indeed, like all other human beings. Amazing, innit?
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