Time to Operate or Time to Go?
Are overcrowded waiting rooms, long waiting times, rushed physicians, exorbitant fees, and inadequate health insurance coverage creating a dent in the metal of the traditional physician-patient relationship? The hustle and bustle of a busy operating theater once looked like this. We've come a long way. Yet, with all our technological advances and benefit of hindsight, we have still failed to learn that the best medicine is not practiced via the hum of machines, the popping of pills, the soft sound of Muzak, the big screens with high definition on office walls, or the so-called pillars of knowledge buttressed in the flesh of Armani or Gucci. Time, a gentle word, the ability to listen, and the laying of hands are the glue that will hold the fragile patchwork of our health care system together. While specialists appear to have forgotten this, family physicians have not and are called upon to assume a throne abdicated by those who would seek a continuous bottom line, ample profit margins, and a place in the sun. The craftsmen, physicians, and Geppetto's of the future must come to realize that patients, like Pinocchio, are made of flesh, blood, and feelings. If they do not, they will find that tempers grow shorter as their noses grow longer. (photo taken from NEJM, 4-5-07) Dr. Al
posted by Dr. Al at
4/08/2007 01:08:00 PM
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