A recent news headline read: "Study Says Chatty Doctors Forget Patients."
"How are we today, Mr. Troldhaugen?"
"Well, doctor, I have this itch. You know, down below."
"Oh, don't I know it! I've been fighting that for years. Itch can drive you crazy. It's embarrassing too. I mean scratching in public is always awkward, but when you're a dermatologist … What have you been doing for it?"
"I have this fungus cream the druggist gave me."
"That figures. Fungus is usually the first thing everybody thinks of. I guess it could be a fungus, but if treating that does not work you have to think of other conditions. I had the same experience last time I tried to treat myself. I have all these samples, so I tried one. It was hard to remember to put it on twice a day—made me more sympathetic when my patients don't always follow instructions exactly the way I give them. Anyhow, after a while it got pretty obvious that I was going to need something different, so I took a different sample and sure enough that did the trick."
"Maybe you can prescribe that for me."
"It's interesting how common these symptoms are. People often come over to me outside the office to ask pretty much the same questions, about itch and rashes and so forth. Of course, I can't exactly examine them there in the street, but I can get a pretty good idea of what they have and what they need. After all, I've had the same symptoms myself."
"So, doctor, what would you recommend?"
"And sometimes I've tried to share my experiences when I've had the same things as my patients do, just to show them that their situation isn't as strange or as frustrating as they might have thought. Take my wart, for instance …"
"But I don't have a wart."
"I had a wart on my left thumb. Now that's interesting right there, because I'm right-handed. People always assume that warts are a virus so they must be contagious, but if they were—and I certainly shake hands with a lot of wart patients every day—why would they spread to my left thumb? But in any case it took me 4 years to get rid of mine, even though I have liquid nitrogen so I can freeze myself anytime I want, and I did too. So I used to tell that to people with resistant warts, so they wouldn't feel quite so frustrated."
"Doctor …"
"And you know what? I found that people really didn't want to know about my problems, whether they were the same kind as they had or not. In fact, patients weren't all that interested in what was going on with me in general. Of course, there are some people who've been seeing me for almost 30 years, who are old friends by now. They know the names of my grandchildren and ask after them, that sort of thing. But most other patients don't really want to know what I've been up to, where I'm going on vacation, or what staffing and administrative hassles I'm dealing with. Which kind of seems right, when you consider that they've come not to find out what's wrong with me, but what's wrong with them. Doesn't that make sense?"
"Yes, but …"
"And then I read in the paper that they did this study in Rochester, with hidden mikes or something, and they found out that doctors were gabbing about their own weight problems and exercise programs, apparently with the thought that this would produce greater rapport. Instead, when the doctors heard tapes of what they said, they realized that maybe not 100% of the time, but most of the time talking about themselves had more to do with the doctors than with the patients. Can you believe that?"
"To tell the truth, I can."
"It's amazing how people can see faults in other people but not notice it in themselves. Isn't that right, Mr. Trondheim?"
"Troldhaugen."
"Right. Well, it's been nice chatting with you. Did I give you the prescription?"