Talking to patients about the decisions of other doctors is kinda challenges. On the one hand you want to make your patient feel heard and be sympathetic to their concerns that their health may have been mismanaged. On the other hand, I want to believe that most, if not all doctors are trying to do what’s best for their patients, at least given what information they have. Plus, I can’t confidently speak about an encounter I wasn’t involved in.
That said, I think we can always do a better job of listening to our patient. I can do more to take a second to check ourselves when we are having a long day to make sure our mental state isn’t affecting our medical decision making.
Today we send a patient to the emergency department. The patient had been dealing with ongoing abdominal pain for the past 5 months, hoping around to different hospitals essentially being told to walk it off. When they finally get a proper work-up and appropriate treatment, the pain didn’t get better. They came to clinic today and were understandably frustrated. After talking to them about what was going on and then talking to my resident and attending, we decided the patient had to be sent to the hospital. We almost didn’t see them today because they were running late and had difficulty finding parking.
nANIMOv 