Physician, Hush Thyself

A new study alleges that doctors are overly chatty during patient visits, and worse--talk too much about themselves. Self-centered doctors? No!

Writing in the Archives of Internal Medicine (which, by the way, I understand has a totally wild personals section), researchers wrote that physician "disclosures, both not useful and disruptive, interrupted the flow of information exchange and expended valuable patient time in the typically time-pressured primary care visit."

Here is an actual doctor/patient exchange from the study:

DOCTOR: So, is that boil any better, Mr. Frumholtz?

PATIENT: Not really, doctor. In fact, not only is it still so painful I have had to buy Morphine on eBay, but I also believe my cancer may be back. Oh, and I think I may have had a minor stroke during breakfast this morning according to my wife.

DOCTOR: Speaking of strokes, you're not going to believe this--I shot a 67 at Ballymore yesterday. Do you remember how windy it was? Unreal. So how's tricks?

If you are like most people, an overly chatty doctor is the least of your problems. Hello? Not that I am a researcher for the august Archives of Internal Medicine (if you're still online there looking for the personals I was just kidding), but I think I speak for patients everywhere when I point out to these presumably otherwise brilliant folks that (a) the thing that interupts the flow of patient exchange, and (b), expends valuable patient time is NOT the fact that doctors talk about themselves too much, but the fact that they are always, always, always LATE.

Perhaps that rather significant fact somehow eluded the researchers, and will be included next month in the Archives of Painfully Obvious and Really Self-Evident Facts of Life.

If you're like me, you would be only too happy to have your doctor talk about anything he or she wanted to if they would never keep you waiting again. Hell, I would be happy to use sign language or write my comments on little yellow post-its if my doctor was waiting for me, chart in hand, when I arrive. And then, providing he efficiently carried out whatever it was he was supposed to do that visit, I would give him carte blanche to be a non-stop medical motor mouth. For all I care, he could bounce from what he had for dinner last night to why he switched to Cingular to what he thought of "Knocked Up." If that was the trade-off for never having to wait a single moment for your doctor again, what wouldn't you mind hearing him or her go on about?

("Your daughter's been cast as sorcerer #3 and tree #1 in Rumpelstiltskin? That's fabulous, doctor! And good luck with that new ride-on mower--I'll just fill this prescription then on the way home, and thanks again for being so prompt today!")

So doctors may talk too much.
But apparently only to the people who are scheduled ahead of you.
Finally, an explanation for why they are always running late.