I can’t believe I am writing about this again, but here I am. After I wrote the last post, I wrote to the doctor – not to hear back from him, but just to let him know what this patient’s experience was with him. I had been advised to write to him while I was still mad, and not send it – which I did. It took almost a week for me to be more calm, but I did write and send an email then. I tried to be clear that this was my experience, and that it was not the fact that there was a resident involved, but rather the fact that I did not feel like I was even there, and that things went way longer than I had expected them to, based on what their system had said.
He actually called me that night. I wish he hadn’t. He spent a lot of time telling me that he prides himself on giving the patent lots of attention, etc. Well, maybe this was an aberration, but that’s not how it felt to me. He pretended to listen to what I had to say (I am not sure he really WAS hearing what I said), and then proceeded to tell me the same thing a couple more times. His response to my feelings about the wait time that did not match what I had been told was that I had been told wrong, and the implication was that somehow that was MY fault. And then he asked me why I had chosen to see him where I did, and not at the other place he practices, where they are more set up to deal with what I was there for. What? I should have gone to the other place? That was the first I heard of that. I knew he practiced at the other place as well; I had no idea that I should have gone there. I could have, had I known that perhaps I should have. Once again, he had knowledge that I was not privy tom and once again the implication was that somehow that was my fault.
I did let him know that I was so mad when he finally got around to talking to me that I don’t even know what he said. He offered to go over it with me on the phone, and I told him no, that I was still too upset to retain anything. The fact was that I kept trying to get him to hang up. He just kept telling me what he prides himself on and how he is not like that, and I was too polite to just hang up on him. At some point I do need to call his office and get someone to either go over the results with me, or to send them to me. I should know what the results are.
Altogether I would say that was a very unsatisfactory doctor visit for me, and an even more unsatisfactory follow-up. The bottom line appears to be one of very poorly set expectations, which was bad enough, but I can understand that. But what I think should have happened if he was going to call, was some kind of nod to the fact that I was upset, and that my experience, though maybe not what he intended, was not good. Certainly he should not have been implying that it was my fault that the system did not give me all the information I should have had, and bad information when they did give me any.
Thanks for letting me rant. I believe that I will get over this, but that it may take a little longer after that phone call.
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