I came to clinic at 9.15 am the other day. I was held up in the wards and was fifteen minutes late. My patient, a 40 year old housewife with poorly controlled diabetes was fidgeting outside my room. She was unhappy. I could tell. She entered my room and started berating me for my seeming lack of consideration for her time. By the time she was done, I had apologized a dozen times. We started with the consultation and to my chagrin, she forgot to bring her home sugar monitoring chart. Her blood sugar control was abysmal and her kidneys were starting to leak protein. She was obese and still gorges on fast food despite being counseled by a dietician. She has defaulted her appointment to the eye doctor because she felt ’her eyes are just fine’. She has not been taking her medication for the past week as she was visiting her sister and forgot to bring it along.

Before walking out of the room she had the temerity to say this: “ If only you could spend more time with me, you could have treated my diabetes better. You just had to be late.”

My years of training in medicine kicked in: “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. It won’t happen again”

She walks out. The next patient walks in. And the cycle repeats itself…

This is a common scenario faced by doctors. We bear the brunt for everything that goes wrong in a patient’s life. The poorly managed disease, the horrid weather, the ungodly waiting hours, the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, the grumpy nurses, the lazy attendants and at times the odious smell that emanates from the person sitting next to them.

We face these frivolous accusations and absorb them, giving our patients an outlet to vent their frustrations and anger. We tell ourselves, “This is part of the job”.

We live by the same mantra regardless of our nationality, color, religion, race or creed… “The patient is ALWAYS right”.

I have listed the following complaints based on my experience and that of my colleagues.

The doctors are inconsiderate towards the patient’s time.

You are probably right. We are inconsiderate. We are inconsiderate for abandoning our health so you could be healthy.

We are inconsiderate for skipping our meals and not giving in to the excruciating pangs of hunger so we could monitor your fluids when you are down with severe dengue.

We are inconsiderate for not returning home to have dinner with our family and loved ones because we are too busy consoling yours.

We are inconsiderate for missing our daughter’s dance recital or our son’s football match because your child was admitted to the intensive care unit and without us being there, will probably never make it through the day.

We are inconsiderate for forgetting our wedding anniversary because our mind was filled with the thoughts of our patients undergoing complications in labour.

We are inconsiderate for placing our patient’s well being above all else, including our own personal time. We should have considered our family and friends before spending so much time at work. We are very inconsiderate indeed.

The doctors are selfish and spend very little time during consultation with their patients

An average doctor sees ten to fifteen patients in clinic and this number varies according to hospitals around the world. The larger the pool of doctors, the lesser the number of patients they see, and the amount of quality time they are allowed to spend with their patients increases.

Bearing in mind this simple logic, if the consultation time runs from 9 am to 1 pm, which is exactly four hours, and in a clinic with roughly ten patients per doctor; we are only allowed 24 minutes per patient.

This does not take into account the walk in patients, the forced bookings, the late comers, the ’missed appointments’ who decide to turn up on that day, the ’selective amnesiacs’ who got their appointment dates wrong, and finally the ’self anointed VIPs’ who probably donated a few dialysis machines and built the entire south wing of the hospital.

If you have been to a hospital, have you ever wondered why our clinics don’t finish on time? Have you ever wondered why the doctors are still seeing patients during their lunch hour? Have you asked your doctors if they have had their lunch or at least a bite to eat from morning?

If you do, I guess you will find out how ’selfish’ they really are.

The doctors have ’special preference’ over certain patients compared to others

You are absolutely right! We won’t even bother denying this.

Picture this scenario. A patient presents to the emergency department with a massive heart attack. Time is of essence. In case you didn’t know, every second wasted is detrimental to the patient’s life. The doctor knowing this well, rushes to the emergency unit, pushes the patient to the cardiac care unit and performs a life saving procedure called ’angioplasty’. He may have to leave his clinic or the wards, where the stable patients are waiting to see him, who are at present in no danger whatsoever, except probably a bit annoyed of having their discharge from the ward delayed.

We may have to delay your MRI appointment for an hour, as patient may come in with a spinal cord injury requiring urgent radiological diagnosis and surgical intervention.

A pediatrician may take an hour of her time to review a child in an acute cubicle but may only spend minutes with your child who is well and awaiting discharge.

We recognize the ‘frequent visitors’ to our emergency department. And we know the ‘funny feeling’ you have around your fingertips at 3 a.m can wait while we attend to a patient brought in unconscious after an accident.

There are times the operating theaters are fully booked, that we need to postpone elective surgeries to accommodate urgent life threatening cases. We can’t proceed with removal of a lipoma from your hairy back if a mother with fetal distress arrives in labour. If an emergency Caesarean Section is not performed in time, we could lose both the mother and her baby.

You can’t imagine our trepidations when we approach your bed, as we prepare ourselves mentally for the verbal abuse that is about to follow, knowing in full knowledge that you have fasted the whole night prior to surgery.

You will inadvertently be mad. We know. And we can’t help it. We do have ’special preferences’. But what you don’t realize is this; it’s best not to be one of our ’special preferences’.

The doctors are supposed to know everything about us and don’t have to keep looking at their notes

Patients have accused me of showing little interest in them if I can’t recall every detail of their symptoms, admissions history and medications, especially if I have to keep referring to my notes.

I am often left embarrassed by the cynical looks some patients give me when I am unable to answer all the questions. Even when I say with all honesty , ’I will look into it and get back to you’, the disparaging remarks can be quite hurtful.

I have often wondered if a lawyer is able to recall with exact precision every case he has tried? Can a teacher recall at will the details of every one of his students examination results? Will a bank manager remember every single detail of his client’s account?

The doctors are responsible for our health and it’s their fault if we don’t get better.

We are responsible for our patient’s well being. Only a fool would say otherwise.

We can continue to admonish obese diabetic patients to lose weight and control their diabetes but they don’t heed our advice. They return time and time again for more medication and continue deteriorating and get upset with the doctor when they develop complications from the disease. They assume it’s our responsibility to fix things as they pay taxes.

We can only counsel a patient with scarred lungs to stop smoking and to be more compliant to their medication, but if they choose to continue smoking and disregard our advice, are the doctors to be faulted when they have done nothing to help themselves?

It’s still difficult for us to comprehend the unrealistic responsibilities placed on doctors.

There is a quote by Rumi, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.”

We are not perfect. We are not trying to be. But our patients often forget as they tend only to look at the ’thorns’ in their lives, that we, the doctors, are ’patients’ too.

And it is not always our fault.