How many hours do we spend trying to locate the right doctor, travelling to his clinic or hospital, waiting for your turn at the clinic, and then answer all his questions? After that, how much time does the doctor give to you? How much of that is with his full concenteration, without interruption by the mobile phone ringing? Is he really listening to you, or trying to answer the nurse's query about some critical problem? How does he get the thread of his thought back after a serious interruption? Is the advise he is giving you well -thought out?
I think most of the time, what we get is really not worth the time and money spent on it. If you have many questions to ask, the doctor may entertain two, and then will start looking at his watch, call his secretary, and show his impatience in many other ways. He has many other patients waiting, the ward round still to complete, the operation theater ready for him, so many other things, that the pesky little relative of the patient in front of him is a real nuisance!
How about an online portal, where patients talk about their problems, ask questions, and read about other people's problems and how they were solved? How about it if doctors spend some quality time reading and understanding the patient's problem, giving it due thought, and then give a proper, formal advice, a process uninterrupted by umpteen phone calls? The doctor could do it at his leisure, and the patient could read it at his!
Of course, not all problems would be solved by this portal; the intimacy of doctor-patient relationship would not be achieved by this portal. But can it increase the focus on the patient's problem? Might it not make the doctor a wee bit more attentive and careful? Wouldn't such advise be of far more value than that given in a hurry, with interruption, to questions only half-heard and ill-understood?
Posted by drphaniraj
at 7:49 AM
